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+Project Gutenberg's The Clue of the Twisted Candle, by Edgar Wallace
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Clue of the Twisted Candle
+
+Author: Edgar Wallace
+
+Posting Date: December 11, 2008 [EBook #2688]
+Release Date: June, 2001
+Last Updated: March 16, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CLUE OF THE TWISTED CANDLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Project Gutenberg Volunteer
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CLUE OF THE TWISTED CANDLE
+
+By Edgar Wallace
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The 4.15 from Victoria to Lewes had been held up at Three Bridges in
+consequence of a derailment and, though John Lexman was fortunate enough
+to catch a belated connection to Beston Tracey, the wagonette which was
+the sole communication between the village and the outside world had
+gone.
+
+“If you can wait half an hour, Mr. Lexman,” said the station-master, “I
+will telephone up to the village and get Briggs to come down for you.”
+
+John Lexman looked out upon the dripping landscape and shrugged his
+shoulders.
+
+“I'll walk,” he said shortly and, leaving his bag in the
+station-master's care and buttoning his mackintosh to his chin, he
+stepped forth resolutely into the rain to negotiate the two miles which
+separated the tiny railway station from Little Tracey.
+
+The downpour was incessant and likely to last through the night.
+The high hedges on either side of the narrow road were so many leafy
+cascades; the road itself was in places ankle deep in mud. He stopped
+under the protecting cover of a big tree to fill and light his pipe and
+with its bowl turned downwards continued his walk. But for the
+driving rain which searched every crevice and found every chink in his
+waterproof armor, he preferred, indeed welcomed, the walk.
+
+The road from Beston Tracey to Little Beston was associated in his mind
+with some of the finest situations in his novels. It was on this road
+that he had conceived “The Tilbury Mystery.” Between the station and the
+house he had woven the plot which had made “Gregory Standish” the most
+popular detective story of the year. For John Lexman was a maker of
+cunning plots.
+
+If, in the literary world, he was regarded by superior persons as a
+writer of “shockers,” he had a large and increasing public who were
+fascinated by the wholesome and thrilling stories he wrote, and who
+held on breathlessly to the skein of mystery until they came to the
+denouement he had planned.
+
+But no thought of books, or plots, or stories filled his troubled mind
+as he strode along the deserted road to Little Beston. He had had two
+interviews in London, one of which under ordinary circumstances would
+have filled him with joy: He had seen T. X. and “T. X.” was T. X.
+Meredith, who would one day be Chief of the Criminal Investigation
+Department and was now an Assistant Commissioner of Police, engaged in
+the more delicate work of that department.
+
+In his erratic, tempestuous way, T. X. had suggested the greatest idea
+for a plot that any author could desire. But it was not of T. X. that
+John Lexman thought as he breasted the hill, on the slope of which was
+the tiny habitation known by the somewhat magnificent title of Beston
+Priory.
+
+It was the interview he had had with the Greek on the previous day which
+filled his mind, and he frowned as he recalled it. He opened the little
+wicket gate and went through the plantation to the house, doing his
+best to shake off the recollection of the remarkable and unedifying
+discussion he had had with the moneylender.
+
+Beston Priory was little more than a cottage, though one of its walls
+was an indubitable relic of that establishment which a pious Howard had
+erected in the thirteenth century. A small and unpretentious building,
+built in the Elizabethan style with quaint gables and high chimneys,
+its latticed windows and sunken gardens, its rosary and its tiny meadow,
+gave it a certain manorial completeness which was a source of great
+pride to its owner.
+
+He passed under the thatched porch, and stood for a moment in the broad
+hallway as he stripped his drenching mackintosh.
+
+The hall was in darkness. Grace would probably be changing for dinner,
+and he decided that in his present mood he would not disturb her. He
+passed through the long passage which led to the big study at the back
+of the house. A fire burnt redly in the old-fashioned grate and the snug
+comfort of the room brought a sense of ease and relief. He changed his
+shoes, and lit the table lamp.
+
+The room was obviously a man's den. The leather-covered chairs, the big
+and well-filled bookcase which covered one wall of the room, the
+huge, solid-oak writing-desk, covered with books and half-finished
+manuscripts, spoke unmistakably of its owner's occupation.
+
+After he had changed his shoes, he refilled his pipe, walked over to the
+fire, and stood looking down into its glowing heart.
+
+He was a man a little above medium height, slimly built, with a breadth
+of shoulder which was suggestive of the athlete. He had indeed rowed 4
+in his boat, and had fought his way into the semi-finals of the
+amateur boxing championship of England. His face was strong, lean, yet
+well-moulded. His eyes were grey and deep, his eyebrows straight and a
+little forbidding. The clean-shaven mouth was big and generous, and the
+healthy tan of his cheek told of a life lived in the open air.
+
+There was nothing of the recluse or the student in his appearance. He
+was in fact a typical, healthy-looking Britisher, very much like any
+other man of his class whom one would meet in the mess-room of the
+British army, in the wardrooms of the fleet, or in the far-off posts of
+the Empire, where the administrative cogs of the great machine are to be
+seen at work.
+
+There was a little tap at the door, and before he could say “Come in” it
+was pushed open and Grace Lexman entered.
+
+If you described her as brave and sweet you might secure from that brief
+description both her manner and her charm. He half crossed the room to
+meet her, and kissed her tenderly.
+
+“I didn't know you were back until--” she said; linking her arm in his.
+
+“Until you saw the horrible mess my mackintosh has made,” he smiled. “I
+know your methods, Watson!”
+
+She laughed, but became serious again.
+
+“I am very glad you've come back. We have a visitor,” she said.
+
+He raised his eyebrows.
+
+“A visitor? Whoever came down on a day like this?”
+
+She looked at him a little strangely.
+
+“Mr. Kara,” she said.
+
+“Kara? How long has he been here?”
+
+“He came at four.”
+
+There was nothing enthusiastic in her tone.
+
+“I can't understand why you don't like old Kara,” rallied her husband.
+
+“There are very many reasons,” she replied, a little curtly for her.
+
+“Anyway,” said John Lexman, after a moment's thought, “his arrival is
+rather opportune. Where is he?”
+
+“He is in the drawing-room.”
+
+The Priory drawing-room was a low-ceilinged, rambling apartment,
+“all old print and chrysanthemums,” to use Lexman's description. Cosy
+armchairs, a grand piano, an almost medieval open grate, faced with
+dull-green tiles, a well-worn but cheerful carpet and two big silver
+candelabras were the principal features which attracted the newcomer.
+
+There was in this room a harmony, a quiet order and a soothing quality
+which made it a haven of rest to a literary man with jagged nerves. Two
+big bronze bowls were filled with early violets, another blazed like a
+pale sun with primroses, and the early woodland flowers filled the room
+with a faint fragrance.
+
+A man rose to his feet, as John Lexman entered and crossed the room with
+an easy carriage. He was a man possessed of singular beauty of face and
+of figure. Half a head taller than the author, he carried himself with
+such a grace as to conceal his height.
+
+“I missed you in town,” he said, “so I thought I'd run down on the off
+chance of seeing you.”
+
+He spoke in the well-modulated tone of one who had had a long
+acquaintance with the public schools and universities of England. There
+was no trace of any foreign accent, yet Remington Kara was a Greek and
+had been born and partly educated in the more turbulent area of Albania.
+
+The two men shook hands warmly.
+
+“You'll stay to dinner?”
+
+Kara glanced round with a smile at Grace Lexman. She sat uncomfortably
+upright, her hands loosely folded on her lap, her face devoid of
+encouragement.
+
+“If Mrs. Lexman doesn't object,” said the Greek.
+
+“I should be pleased, if you would,” she said, almost mechanically; “it
+is a horrid night and you won't get anything worth eating this side of
+London and I doubt very much,” she smiled a little, “if the meal I can
+give you will be worthy of that description.”
+
+“What you can give me will be more than sufficient,” he said, with a
+little bow, and turned to her husband.
+
+In a few minutes they were deep in a discussion of books and places, and
+Grace seized the opportunity to make her escape. From books in general
+to Lexman's books in particular the conversation flowed.
+
+“I've read every one of them, you know,” said Kara.
+
+John made a little face. “Poor devil,” he said sardonically.
+
+“On the contrary,” said Kara, “I am not to be pitied. There is a great
+criminal lost in you, Lexman.”
+
+“Thank you,” said John.
+
+“I am not being uncomplimentary, am I?” smiled the Greek. “I am merely
+referring to the ingenuity of your plots. Sometimes your books baffle
+and annoy me. If I cannot see the solution of your mysteries before the
+book is half through, it angers me a little. Of course in the majority
+of cases I know the solution before I have reached the fifth chapter.”
+
+John looked at him in surprise and was somewhat piqued.
+
+“I flatter myself it is impossible to tell how my stories will end until
+the last chapter,” he said.
+
+Kara nodded.
+
+“That would be so in the case of the average reader, but you forget that
+I am a student. I follow every little thread of the clue which you leave
+exposed.”
+
+“You should meet T. X.,” said John, with a laugh, as he rose from his
+chair to poke the fire.
+
+“T. X.?”
+
+“T. X. Meredith. He is the most ingenious beggar you could meet. We were
+at Caius together, and he is by way of being a great pal of mine. He is
+in the Criminal Investigation Department.”
+
+Kara nodded. There was the light of interest in his eyes and he would
+have pursued the discussion further, but at the moment dinner was
+announced.
+
+It was not a particularly cheerful meal because Grace did not as usual
+join in the conversation, and it was left to Kara and to her husband
+to supply the deficiencies. She was experiencing a curious sense of
+depression, a premonition of evil which she could not define. Again and
+again in the course of the dinner she took her mind back to the events
+of the day to discover the reason for her unease.
+
+Usually when she adopted this method she came upon the trivial causes
+in which apprehension was born, but now she was puzzled to find that a
+solution was denied her. Her letters of the morning had been pleasant,
+neither the house nor the servants had given her any trouble. She was
+well herself, and though she knew John had a little money trouble,
+since his unfortunate speculation in Roumanian gold shares, and she half
+suspected that he had had to borrow money to make good his losses, yet
+his prospects were so excellent and the success of his last book
+so promising that she, probably seeing with a clearer vision the
+unimportance of those money worries, was less concerned about the
+problem than he.
+
+“You will have your coffee in the study, I suppose,” said Grace, “and
+I know you'll excuse me; I have to see Mrs. Chandler on the mundane
+subject of laundry.”
+
+She favoured Kara with a little nod as she left the room and touched
+John's shoulder lightly with her hand in passing.
+
+Kara's eyes followed her graceful figure until she was out of view,
+then:
+
+“I want to see you, Kara,” said John Lexman, “if you will give me five
+minutes.”
+
+“You can have five hours, if you like,” said the other, easily.
+
+They went into the study together; the maid brought the coffee
+and liqueur, and placed them on a little table near the fire and
+disappeared.
+
+For a time the conversation was general. Kara, who was a frank admirer
+of the comfort of the room and who lamented his own inability to secure
+with money the cosiness which John had obtained at little cost, went on
+a foraging expedition whilst his host applied himself to a proof which
+needed correcting.
+
+“I suppose it is impossible for you to have electric light here,” Kara
+asked.
+
+“Quite,” replied the other.
+
+“Why?”
+
+“I rather like the light of this lamp.”
+
+“It isn't the lamp,” drawled the Greek and made a little grimace; “I
+hate these candles.”
+
+He waved his hand to the mantle-shelf where the six tall, white, waxen
+candles stood out from two wall sconces.
+
+“Why on earth do you hate candles?” asked the other in surprise.
+
+Kara made no reply for the moment, but shrugged his shoulders. Presently
+he spoke.
+
+“If you were ever tied down to a chair and by the side of that chair was
+a small keg of black powder and stuck in that powder was a small candle
+that burnt lower and lower every minute--my God!”
+
+John was amazed to see the perspiration stand upon the forehead of his
+guest.
+
+“That sounds thrilling,” he said.
+
+The Greek wiped his forehead with a silk handkerchief and his hand shook
+a little.
+
+“It was something more than thrilling,” he said.
+
+“And when did this occur?” asked the author curiously.
+
+“In Albania,” replied the other; “it was many years ago, but the devils
+are always sending me reminders of the fact.”
+
+He did not attempt to explain who the devils were or under what
+circumstances he was brought to this unhappy pass, but changed the
+subject definitely.
+
+Sauntering round the cosy room he followed the bookshelf which filled
+one wall and stopped now and again to examine some title. Presently he
+drew forth a stout volume.
+
+“'Wild Brazil',” he read, “by George Gathercole-do you know Gathercole?”
+
+John was filling his pipe from a big blue jar on his desk and nodded.
+
+“Met him once--a taciturn devil. Very short of speech and, like all men
+who have seen and done things, less inclined to talk about himself than
+any man I know.”
+
+Kara looked at the book with a thoughtful pucker of brow and turned the
+leaves idly.
+
+“I've never seen him,” he said as he replaced the book, “yet, in a
+sense, his new journey is on my behalf.”
+
+The other man looked up.
+
+“On your behalf?”
+
+“Yes--you know he has gone to Patagonia for me. He believes there is
+gold there--you will learn as much from his book on the mountain systems
+of South America. I was interested in his theories and corresponded
+with him. As a result of that correspondence he undertook to make a
+geological survey for me. I sent him money for his expenses, and he went
+off.”
+
+“You never saw him?” asked John Lexman, surprised.
+
+Kara shook his head.
+
+“That was not--?” began his host.
+
+“Not like me, you were going to say. Frankly, it was not, but then I
+realized that he was an unusual kind of man. I invited him to dine with
+me before he left London, and in reply received a wire from Southampton
+intimating that he was already on his way.”
+
+Lexman nodded.
+
+“It must be an awfully interesting kind of life,” he said. “I suppose he
+will be away for quite a long time?”
+
+“Three years,” said Kara, continuing his examination of the bookshelf.
+
+“I envy those fellows who run round the world writing books,” said John,
+puffing reflectively at his pipe. “They have all the best of it.”
+
+Kara turned. He stood immediately behind the author and the other
+could not see his face. There was, however, in his voice an unusual
+earnestness and an unusual quiet vehemence.
+
+“What have you to complain about!” he asked, with that little drawl of
+his. “You have your own creative work--the most fascinating branch of
+labour that comes to a man. He, poor beggar, is bound to actualities.
+You have the full range of all the worlds which your imagination
+gives to you. You can create men and destroy them, call into existence
+fascinating problems, mystify and baffle ten or twenty thousand people,
+and then, at a word, elucidate your mystery.”
+
+John laughed.
+
+“There is something in that,” he said.
+
+“As for the rest of your life,” Kara went on in a lower voice, “I think
+you have that which makes life worth living--an incomparable wife.”
+
+Lexman swung round in his chair, and met the other's gaze, and there was
+something in the set of the other's handsome face which took his breath
+away.
+
+“I do not see--” he began.
+
+Kara smiled.
+
+“That was an impertinence, wasn't it!” he said, banteringly. “But then
+you mustn't forget, my dear man, that I was very anxious to marry your
+wife. I don't suppose it is secret. And when I lost her, I had ideas
+about you which are not pleasant to recall.”
+
+He had recovered his self-possession and had continued his aimless
+stroll about the room.
+
+“You must remember I am a Greek, and the modern Greek is no philosopher.
+You must remember, too, that I am a petted child of fortune, and have
+had everything I wanted since I was a baby.”
+
+“You are a fortunate devil,” said the other, turning back to his desk,
+and taking up his pen.
+
+For a moment Kara did not speak, then he made as though he would say
+something, checked himself, and laughed.
+
+“I wonder if I am,” he said.
+
+And now he spoke with a sudden energy.
+
+“What is this trouble you are having with Vassalaro?”
+
+John rose from his chair and walked over to the fire, stood gazing down
+into its depths, his legs wide apart, his hands clasped behind him, and
+Kara took his attitude to supply an answer to the question.
+
+“I warned you against Vassalaro,” he said, stooping by the other's side
+to light his cigar with a spill of paper. “My dear Lexman, my fellow
+countrymen are unpleasant people to deal with in certain moods.”
+
+“He was so obliging at first,” said Lexman, half to himself.
+
+“And now he is so disobliging,” drawled Kara. “That is a way which
+moneylenders have, my dear man; you were very foolish to go to him at
+all. I could have lent you the money.”
+
+“There were reasons why I should not borrow money from you,”, said John,
+quietly, “and I think you yourself have supplied the principal reason
+when you told me just now, what I already knew, that you wanted to marry
+Grace.”
+
+“How much is the amount?” asked Kara, examining his well-manicured
+finger-nails.
+
+“Two thousand five hundred pounds,” replied John, with a short laugh,
+“and I haven't two thousand five hundred shillings at this moment.”
+
+“Will he wait?”
+
+John Lexman shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“Look here, Kara,” he said, suddenly, “don't think I want to reproach
+you, but it was through you that I met Vassalaro so that you know the
+kind of man he is.”
+
+Kara nodded.
+
+“Well, I can tell you he has been very unpleasant indeed,” said John,
+with a frown, “I had an interview with him yesterday in London and it
+is clear that he is going to make a lot of trouble. I depended upon the
+success of my play in town giving me enough to pay him off, and I very
+foolishly made a lot of promises of repayment which I have been unable
+to keep.”
+
+“I see,” said Kara, and then, “does Mrs. Lexman know about this matter?”
+
+“A little,” said the other.
+
+He paced restlessly up and down the room, his hands behind him and his
+chin upon his chest.
+
+“Naturally I have not told her the worst, or how beastly unpleasant the
+man has been.”
+
+He stopped and turned.
+
+“Do you know he threatened to kill me?” he asked.
+
+Kara smiled.
+
+“I can tell you it was no laughing matter,” said the other, angrily,
+“I nearly took the little whippersnapper by the scruff of the neck and
+kicked him.”
+
+Kara dropped his hand on the other's arm.
+
+“I am not laughing at you,” he said; “I am laughing at the thought of
+Vassalaro threatening to kill anybody. He is the biggest coward in the
+world. What on earth induced him to take this drastic step?”
+
+“He said he is being hard pushed for money,” said the other, moodily,
+“and it is possibly true. He was beside himself with anger and anxiety,
+otherwise I might have given the little blackguard the thrashing he
+deserved.”
+
+Kara who had continued his stroll came down the room and halted in front
+of the fireplace looking at the young author with a paternal smile.
+
+“You don't understand Vassalaro,” he said; “I repeat he is the greatest
+coward in the world. You will probably discover he is full of firearms
+and threats of slaughter, but you have only to click a revolver to see
+him collapse. Have you a revolver, by the way?”
+
+“Oh, nonsense,” said the other, roughly, “I cannot engage myself in that
+kind of melodrama.”
+
+“It is not nonsense,” insisted the other, “when you are in Rome, et
+cetera, and when you have to deal with a low-class Greek you must use
+methods which will at least impress him. If you thrash him, he will
+never forgive you and will probably stick a knife into you or your wife.
+If you meet his melodrama with melodrama and at the psychological moment
+produce your revolver; you will secure the effect you require. Have you
+a revolver?”
+
+John went to his desk and, pulling open a drawer, took out a small
+Browning.
+
+“That is the extent of my armory,” he said, “it has never been fired and
+was sent to me by an unknown admirer last Christmas.”
+
+“A curious Christmas present,” said the other, examining the weapon.
+
+“I suppose the mistaken donor imagined from my books that I lived in
+a veritable museum of revolvers, sword sticks and noxious drugs,” said
+Lexman, recovering some of his good humour; “it was accompanied by a
+card.”
+
+“Do you know how it works?” asked the other.
+
+“I have never troubled very much about it,” replied Lexman, “I know that
+it is loaded by slipping back the cover, but as my admirer did not send
+ammunition, I never even practised with it.”
+
+There was a knock at the door.
+
+“That is the post,” explained John.
+
+The maid had one letter on the salver and the author took it up with a
+frown.
+
+“From Vassalaro,” he said, when the girl had left the room.
+
+The Greek took the letter in his hand and examined it.
+
+“He writes a vile fist,” was his only comment as he handed it back to
+John.
+
+He slit open the thin, buff envelope and took out half a dozen sheets of
+yellow paper, only a single sheet of which was written upon. The letter
+was brief:
+
+  “I must see you to-night without fail,” ran the scrawl; “meet me
+   at the crossroads between Beston Tracey and the Eastbourne
+   Road.  I shall be there at eleven o'clock, and, if you want to
+   preserve your life, you had better bring me a substantial
+   instalment.”
+
+It was signed “Vassalaro.”
+
+John read the letter aloud. “He must be mad to write a letter like
+that,” he said; “I'll meet the little devil and teach him such a lesson
+in politeness as he is never likely to forget.”
+
+He handed the letter to the other and Kara read it in silence.
+
+“Better take your revolver,” he said as he handed it back.
+
+John Lexman looked at his watch.
+
+“I have an hour yet, but it will take me the best part of twenty minutes
+to reach the Eastbourne Road.”
+
+“Will you see him?” asked Kara, in a tone of surprise.
+
+“Certainly,” Lexman replied emphatically: “I cannot have him coming up
+to the house and making a scene and that is certainly what the little
+beast will do.”
+
+“Will you pay him?” asked Kara softly.
+
+John made no answer. There was probably 10 pounds in the house and a
+cheque which was due on the morrow would bring him another 30 pounds.
+He looked at the letter again. It was written on paper of an unusual
+texture. The surface was rough almost like blotting paper and in some
+places the ink absorbed by the porous surface had run. The blank sheets
+had evidently been inserted by a man in so violent a hurry that he had
+not noticed the extravagance.
+
+“I shall keep this letter,” said John.
+
+“I think you are well advised. Vassalaro probably does not know that he
+transgresses a law in writing threatening letters and that should be a
+very strong weapon in your hand in certain eventualities.”
+
+There was a tiny safe in one corner of the study and this John opened
+with a key which he took from his pocket. He pulled open one of the
+steel drawers, took out the papers which were in it and put in their
+place the letter, pushed the drawer to, and locked it.
+
+All the time Kara was watching him intently as one who found more than
+an ordinary amount of interest in the novelty of the procedure.
+
+He took his leave soon afterwards.
+
+“I would like to come with you to your interesting meeting,” he said,
+“but unfortunately I have business elsewhere. Let me enjoin you to take
+your revolver and at the first sign of any bloodthirsty intention on the
+part of my admirable compatriot, produce it and click it once or twice,
+you won't have to do more.”
+
+Grace rose from the piano as Kara entered the little drawing-room and
+murmured a few conventional expressions of regret that the visitor's
+stay had been so short. That there was no sincerity in that regret Kara,
+for one, had no doubt. He was a man singularly free from illusions.
+
+They stayed talking a little while.
+
+“I will see if your chauffeur is asleep,” said John, and went out of the
+room.
+
+There was a little silence after he had gone.
+
+“I don't think you are very glad to see me,” said Kara. His frankness
+was a little embarrassing to the girl and she flushed slightly.
+
+“I am always glad to see you, Mr. Kara, or any other of my husband's
+friends,” she said steadily.
+
+He inclined his head.
+
+“To be a friend of your husband is something,” he said, and then as if
+remembering something, “I wanted to take a book away with me--I wonder
+if your husband would mind my getting it?”
+
+“I will find it for you.”
+
+“Don't let me bother you,” he protested, “I know my way.”
+
+Without waiting for her permission he left the girl with the unpleasant
+feeling that he was taking rather much for granted. He was gone less
+than a minute and returned with a book under his arm.
+
+“I have not asked Lexman's permission to take it,” he said, “but I am
+rather interested in the author. Oh, here you are,” he turned to John
+who came in at that moment. “Might I take this book on Mexico?” he
+asked. “I will return it in the morning.”
+
+They stood at the door, watching the tail light of the motor disappear
+down the drive; and returned in silence to the drawing room.
+
+“You look worried, dear,” she said, laying her hand on his shoulder.
+
+He smiled faintly.
+
+“Is it the money?” she asked anxiously.
+
+For a moment he was tempted to tell her of the letter. He stifled the
+temptation realizing that she would not consent to his going out if she
+knew the truth.
+
+“It is nothing very much,” he said. “I have to go down to Beston Tracey
+to meet the last train. I am expecting some proofs down.”
+
+He hated lying to her, and even an innocuous lie of this character was
+repugnant to him.
+
+“I'm afraid you have had a dull evening,” he said, “Kara was not very
+amusing.”
+
+She looked at him thoughtfully.
+
+“He has not changed very much,” she said slowly.
+
+“He's a wonderfully handsome chap, isn't he?” he asked in a tone of
+admiration. “I can't understand what you ever saw in a fellow like me,
+when you had a man who was not only rich, but possibly the best-looking
+man in the world.”
+
+She shivered a little.
+
+“I have seen a side of Mr. Kara that is not particularly beautiful,” she
+said. “Oh, John, I am afraid of that man!”
+
+He looked at her in astonishment.
+
+“Afraid?” he asked. “Good heavens, Grace, what a thing to say! Why I
+believe he'd do anything for you.”
+
+“That is exactly what I am afraid of,” she said in a low voice.
+
+She had a reason which she did not reveal. She had first met Remington
+Kara in Salonika two years before. She had been doing a tour through the
+Balkans with her father--it was the last tour the famous archeologist
+made--and had met the man who was fated to have such an influence upon
+her life at a dinner given by the American Consul.
+
+Many were the stories which were told about this Greek with his
+Jove-like face, his handsome carriage and his limitless wealth. It
+was said that his mother was an American lady who had been captured by
+Albanian brigands and was sold to one of the Albanian chiefs who fell
+in love with her, and for her sake became a Protestant. He had been
+educated at Yale and at Oxford, and was known to be the possessor of
+vast wealth, and was virtually king of a hill district forty miles out
+of Durazzo. Here he reigned supreme, occupying a beautiful house which
+he had built by an Italian architect, and the fittings and appointments
+of which had been imported from the luxurious centres of the world.
+
+In Albania they called him “Kara Rumo,” which meant “The Black Roman,”
+ for no particular reason so far as any one could judge, for his skin was
+as fair as a Saxon's, and his close-cropped curls were almost golden.
+
+He had fallen in love with Grace Terrell. At first his attentions had
+amused her, and then there came a time when they frightened her, for the
+man's fire and passion had been unmistakable. She had made it plain to
+him that he could base no hopes upon her returning his love, and, in a
+scene which she even now shuddered to recall, he had revealed something
+of his wild and reckless nature. On the following day she did not see
+him, but two days later, when returning through the Bazaar from a dance
+which had been given by the Governor General, her carriage was stopped,
+she was forcibly dragged from its interior, and her cries were stifled
+with a cloth impregnated with a scent of a peculiar aromatic sweetness.
+Her assailants were about to thrust her into another carriage, when a
+party of British bluejackets who had been on leave came upon the scene,
+and, without knowing anything of the nationality of the girl, had
+rescued her.
+
+In her heart of hearts she did not doubt Kara's complicity in this
+medieval attempt to gain a wife, but of this adventure she had told
+her husband nothing. Until her marriage she was constantly receiving
+valuable presents which she as constantly returned to the only address
+she knew--Kara's estate at Lemazo. A few months after her marriage she
+had learned through the newspapers that this “leader of Greek society”
+ had purchased a big house near Cadogan Square, and then, to her
+amazement and to her dismay, Kara had scraped an acquaintance with her
+husband even before the honeymoon was over.
+
+His visits had been happily few, but the growing intimacy between
+John and this strange undisciplined man had been a source of constant
+distress to her.
+
+Should she, at this, the eleventh hour, tell her husband all her fears
+and her suspicions?
+
+She debated the point for some time. And never was she nearer taking him
+into her complete confidence than she was as he sat in the big armchair
+by the side of the piano, a little drawn of face, more than a little
+absorbed in his own meditations. Had he been less worried she might have
+spoken. As it was, she turned the conversation to his last work, the
+big mystery story which, if it would not make his fortune, would mean a
+considerable increase to his income.
+
+At a quarter to eleven he looked at his watch, and rose. She helped him
+on with his coat. He stood for some time irresolutely.
+
+“Is there anything you have forgotten?” she asked.
+
+He asked himself whether he should follow Kara's advice. In any
+circumstance it was not a pleasant thing to meet a ferocious little
+man who had threatened his life, and to meet him unarmed was tempting
+Providence. The whole thing was of course ridiculous, but it was
+ridiculous that he should have borrowed, and it was ridiculous that the
+borrowing should have been necessary, and yet he had speculated on the
+best of advice--it was Kara's advice.
+
+The connection suddenly occurred to him, and yet Kara had not directly
+suggested that he should buy Roumanian gold shares, but had merely
+spoken glowingly of their prospects. He thought a moment, and then
+walked back slowly into the study, pulled open the drawer of his desk,
+took out the sinister little Browning, and slipped it into his pocket.
+
+“I shan't be long, dear,” he said, and kissing the girl he strode out
+into the darkness.
+
+
+Kara sat back in the luxurious depths of his car, humming a little tune,
+as the driver picked his way cautiously over the uncertain road. The
+rain was still falling, and Kara had to rub the windows free of the mist
+which had gathered on them to discover where he was. From time to time
+he looked out as though he expected to see somebody, and then with a
+little smile he remembered that he had changed his original plan, and
+that he had fixed the waiting room of Lewes junction as his rendezvous.
+
+Here it was that he found a little man muffled up to the ears in a big
+top coat, standing before the dying fire. He started as Kara entered and
+at a signal followed him from the room.
+
+The stranger was obviously not English. His face was sallow and peaked,
+his cheeks were hollow, and the beard he wore was irregular-almost
+unkempt.
+
+Kara led the way to the end of the dark platform, before he spoke.
+
+“You have carried out my instructions?” he asked brusquely.
+
+The language he spoke was Arabic, and the other answered him in that
+language.
+
+“Everything that you have ordered has been done, Effendi,” he said
+humbly.
+
+“You have a revolver?”
+
+The man nodded and patted his pocket.
+
+“Loaded?”
+
+“Excellency,” asked the other, in surprise, “what is the use of a
+revolver, if it is not loaded?”
+
+“You understand, you are not to shoot this man,” said Kara. “You are
+merely to present the pistol. To make sure, you had better unload it
+now.”
+
+Wonderingly the man obeyed, and clicked back the ejector.
+
+“I will take the cartridges,” said Kara, holding out his hand.
+
+He slipped the little cylinders into his pocket, and after examining the
+weapon returned it to its owner.
+
+“You will threaten him,” he went on. “Present the revolver straight at
+his heart. You need do nothing else.”
+
+The man shuffled uneasily.
+
+“I will do as you say, Effendi,” he said. “But--”
+
+“There are no 'buts,'” replied the other harshly. “You are to carry out
+my instructions without any question. What will happen then you shall
+see. I shall be at hand. That I have a reason for this play be assured.”
+
+“But suppose he shoots?” persisted the other uneasily.
+
+“He will not shoot,” said Kara easily. “Besides, his revolver is not
+loaded. Now you may go. You have a long walk before you. You know the
+way?”
+
+The man nodded.
+
+“I have been over it before,” he said confidently.
+
+Kara returned to the big limousine which had drawn up some distance from
+the station. He spoke a word or two to the chauffeur in Greek, and the
+man touched his hat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Assistant Commissioner of Police T. X. Meredith did not occupy offices
+in New Scotland Yard. It is the peculiarity of public offices that they
+are planned with the idea of supplying the margin of space above
+all requirements and that on their completion they are found wholly
+inadequate to house the various departments which mysteriously come into
+progress coincident with the building operations.
+
+“T. X.,” as he was known by the police forces of the world, had a big
+suite of offices in Whitehall. The house was an old one facing the Board
+of Trade and the inscription on the ancient door told passers-by that
+this was the “Public Prosecutor, Special Branch.”
+
+The duties of T. X. were multifarious. People said of him--and like most
+public gossip, this was probably untrue--that he was the head of the
+“illegal” department of Scotland Yard. If by chance you lost the keys of
+your safe, T. X. could supply you (so popular rumour ran) with a burglar
+who would open that safe in half an hour.
+
+If there dwelt in England a notorious individual against whom the police
+could collect no scintilla of evidence to justify a prosecution, and if
+it was necessary for the good of the community that that person should
+be deported, it was T. X. who arrested the obnoxious person, hustled
+him into a cab and did not loose his hold upon his victim until he had
+landed him on the indignant shores of an otherwise friendly power.
+
+It is very certain that when the minister of a tiny power which shall be
+nameless was suddenly recalled by his government and brought to trial
+in his native land for putting into circulation spurious bonds, it was
+somebody from the department which T. X. controlled, who burgled His
+Excellency's house, burnt the locks from his safe and secured the
+necessary incriminating evidence.
+
+I say it is fairly certain and here I am merely voicing the opinion of
+very knowledgeable people indeed, heads of public departments who speak
+behind their hands, mysterious under-secretaries of state who discuss
+things in whispers in the remote corners of their clubrooms and the more
+frank views of American correspondents who had no hesitation in putting
+those views into print for the benefit of their readers.
+
+That T. X. had a more legitimate occupation we know, for it was that
+flippant man whose outrageous comment on the Home Office Administration
+is popularly supposed to have sent one Home Secretary to his grave, who
+traced the Deptford murderers through a labyrinth of perjury and who
+brought to book Sir Julius Waglite though he had covered his trail of
+defalcation through the balance sheets of thirty-four companies.
+
+On the night of March 3rd, T. X. sat in his inner office interviewing a
+disconsolate inspector of metropolitan police, named Mansus.
+
+In appearance T. X. conveyed the impression of extreme youth, for his
+face was almost boyish and it was only when you looked at him closely
+and saw the little creases about his eyes, the setting of his straight
+mouth, that you guessed he was on the way to forty. In his early days
+he had been something of a poet, and had written a slight volume
+of “Woodland Lyrics,” the mention of which at this later stage was
+sufficient to make him feel violently unhappy.
+
+In manner he was tactful but persistent, his language was at times
+marked by a violent extravagance and he had had the distinction of
+having provoked, by certain correspondence which had seen the light,
+the comment of a former Home Secretary that “it was unfortunate that
+Mr. Meredith did not take his position with the seriousness which was
+expected from a public official.”
+
+His language was, as I say, under great provocation, violent and
+unusual. He had a trick of using words which never were on land or sea,
+and illustrating his instruction or his admonition with the quaintest
+phraseology.
+
+Now he was tilted back in his office chair at an alarming angle,
+scowling at his distressed subordinate who sat on the edge of a chair at
+the other side of his desk.
+
+“But, T. X.,” protested the Inspector, “there was nothing to be found.”
+
+It was the outrageous practice of Mr. Meredith to insist upon his
+associates calling him by his initials, a practice which had earnt
+disapproval in the highest quarters.
+
+“Nothing is to be found!” he repeated wrathfully. “Curious Mike!”
+
+He sat up with a suddenness which caused the police officer to start
+back in alarm.
+
+“Listen,” said T. X., grasping an ivory paperknife savagely in his hand
+and tapping his blotting-pad to emphasize his words, “you're a pie!”
+
+“I'm a policeman,” said the other patiently.
+
+“A policeman!” exclaimed the exasperated T. X. “You're worse than a pie,
+you're a slud! I'm afraid I shall never make a detective of you,” he
+shook his head sorrowfully at the smiling Mansus who had been in the
+police force when T. X. was a small boy at school, “you are neither Wise
+nor Wily; you combine the innocence of a Baby with the grubbiness of a
+County Parson--you ought to be in the choir.”
+
+At this outrageous insult Mr. Mansus was silent; what he might have
+said, or what further provocation he might have received may be never
+known, for at that moment, the Chief himself walked in.
+
+The Chief of the Police in these days was a grey man, rather tired, with
+a hawk nose and deep eyes that glared under shaggy eyebrows and he was a
+terror to all men of his department save to T. X. who respected nothing
+on earth and very little elsewhere. He nodded curtly to Mansus.
+
+“Well, T. X.,” he said, “what have you discovered about our friend
+Kara?”
+
+He turned from T. X. to the discomforted inspector.
+
+“Very little,” said T. X. “I've had Mansus on the job.”
+
+“And you've found nothing, eh?” growled the Chief.
+
+“He has found all that it is possible to find,” said T. X. “We do not
+perform miracles in this department, Sir George, nor can we pick up the
+threads of a case at five minutes' notice.”
+
+Sir George Haley grunted.
+
+“Mansus has done his best,” the other went on easily, “but it is rather
+absurd to talk about one's best when you know so little of what you
+want.”
+
+Sir George dropped heavily into the arm-chair, and stretched out his
+long thin legs.
+
+“What I want,” he said, looking up at the ceiling and putting his hands
+together, “is to discover something about one Remington Kara, a wealthy
+Greek who has taken a house in Cadogan Square, who has no particular
+position in London society and therefore has no reason for coming
+here, who openly expresses his detestation of the climate, who has
+a magnificent estate in some wild place in the Balkans, who is an
+excellent horseman, a magnificent shot and a passable aviator.”
+
+T. X. nodded to Mansus and with something of gratitude in his eyes the
+inspector took his leave.
+
+“Now Mansus has departed,” said T. X., sitting himself on the edge of
+his desk and selecting with great care a cigarette from the case he took
+from his pocket, “let me know something of the reason for this sudden
+interest in the great ones of the earth.”
+
+Sir George smiled grimly.
+
+“I have the interest which is the interest of my department,” he said.
+“That is to say I want to know a great deal about abnormal people. We
+have had an application from him,” he went on, “which is rather unusual.
+Apparently he is in fear of his life from some cause or other and wants
+to know if he can have a private telephone connection between his house
+and the central office. We told him that he could always get the nearest
+Police Station on the 'phone, but that doesn't satisfy him. He has made
+bad friends with some gentleman of his own country who sooner or later,
+he thinks, will cut his throat.”
+
+T. X. nodded.
+
+“All this I know,” he said patiently, “if you will further unfold the
+secret dossier, Sir George, I am prepared to be thrilled.”
+
+“There is nothing thrilling about it,” growled the older man, rising,
+“but I remember the Macedonian shooting case in South London and I don't
+want a repetition of that sort of thing. If people want to have blood
+feuds, let them take them outside the metropolitan area.”
+
+“By all means,” said T. X., “let them. Personally, I don't care where
+they go. But if that is the extent of your information I can supplement
+it. He has had extensive alterations made to the house he bought in
+Cadogan Square; the room in which he lives is practically a safe.”
+
+Sir George raised his eyebrows.
+
+“A safe,” he repeated.
+
+T. X. nodded.
+
+“A safe,” he said; “its walls are burglar proof, floor and roof are
+reinforced concrete, there is one door which in addition to its ordinary
+lock is closed by a sort of steel latch which he lets fall when he
+retires for the night and which he opens himself personally in the
+morning. The window is unreachable, there are no communicating doors,
+and altogether the room is planned to stand a siege.”
+
+The Chief Commissioner was interested.
+
+“Any more?” he asked.
+
+“Let me think,” said T. X., looking up at the ceiling. “Yes, the
+interior of his room is plainly furnished, there is a big fireplace,
+rather an ornate bed, a steel safe built into the wall and visible from
+its outer side to the policeman whose beat is in that neighborhood.”
+
+“How do you know all this?” asked the Chief Commissioner.
+
+“Because I've been in the room,” said T. X. simply, “having by an
+underhand trick succeeded in gaining the misplaced confidence of Kara's
+housekeeper, who by the way”--he turned round to his desk and scribbled
+a name on the blotting-pad--“will be discharged to-morrow and must be
+found a place.”
+
+“Is there any--er--?” began the Chief.
+
+“Funny business?” interrupted T. X., “not a bit. House and man are quite
+normal save for these eccentricities. He has announced his intention of
+spending three months of the year in England and nine months abroad. He
+is very rich, has no relations, and has a passion for power.”
+
+“Then he'll be hung,” said the Chief, rising.
+
+“I doubt it,” said the other, “people with lots of money seldom get
+hung. You only get hung for wanting money.”
+
+“Then you're in some danger, T. X.,” smiled the Chief, “for according to
+my account you're always more or less broke.”
+
+“A genial libel,” said T. X., “but talking about people being broke, I
+saw John Lexman to-day--you know him!”
+
+The Chief Commissioner nodded.
+
+“I've an idea he's rather hit for money. He was in that Roumanian gold
+swindle, and by his general gloom, which only comes to a man when he's
+in love (and he can't possibly be in love since he's married) or when
+he's in debt, I fear that he is still feeling the effect of that rosy
+adventure.”
+
+A telephone bell in the corner of the room rang sharply, and T. X.
+picked up the receiver. He listened intently.
+
+“A trunk call,” he said over his shoulder to the departing commissioner,
+“it may be something interesting.”
+
+A little pause; then a hoarse voice spoke to him. “Is that you, T. X.?”
+
+“That's me,” said the Assistant Commissioner, commonly.
+
+“It's John Lexman speaking.”
+
+“I shouldn't have recognized your voice,” said T. X., “what is wrong
+with you, John, can't you get your plot to went?”
+
+“I want you to come down here at once,” said the voice urgently, and
+even over the telephone T. X. recognized the distress. “I have shot a
+man, killed him!”
+
+T. X. gasped.
+
+“Good Lord,” he said, “you are a silly ass!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+In the early hours of the morning a tragic little party was assembled in
+the study at Beston Priory. John Lexman, white and haggard, sat on the
+sofa with his wife by his side. Immediate authority as represented by
+a village constable was on duty in the passage outside, whilst T. X.
+sitting at the table with a writing pad and a pencil was briefly noting
+the evidence.
+
+The author had sketched the events of the day. He had described his
+interview with the money-lender the day before and the arrival of the
+letter.
+
+“You have the letter!” asked T. X.
+
+John Lexman nodded.
+
+“I am glad of that,” said the other with a sigh of relief, “that will
+save you from a great deal of unpleasantness, my poor old chap. Tell me
+what happened afterward.”
+
+“I reached the village,” said John Lexman, “and passed through it. There
+was nobody about, the rain was still falling very heavily and indeed I
+didn't meet a single soul all the evening. I reached the place appointed
+about five minutes before time. It was the corner of Eastbourne Road
+on the station side and there I found Vassalaro waiting. I was rather
+ashamed of myself at meeting him at all under these conditions, but I
+was very keen on his not coming to the house for I was afraid it would
+upset Grace. What made it all the more ridiculous was this infernal
+pistol which was in my pocket banging against my side with every step I
+took as though to nudge me to an understanding of my folly.”
+
+“Where did you meet Vassalaro?” asked T. X.
+
+“He was on the other side of the Eastbourne Road and crossed the road
+to meet me. At first he was very pleasant though a little agitated but
+afterward he began to behave in a most extraordinary manner as though he
+was lashing himself up into a fury which he didn't feel. I promised him
+a substantial amount on account, but he grew worse and worse and then,
+suddenly, before I realised what he was doing, he was brandishing a
+revolver in my face and uttering the most extraordinary threats. Then it
+was I remembered Kara's warning.”
+
+“Kara,” said T. X. quickly.
+
+“A man I know and who was responsible for introducing me to Vassalaro.
+He is immensely wealthy.”
+
+“I see,” said T. X., “go on.”
+
+“I remembered this warning,” the other proceeded, “and I thought it
+worth while trying it out to see if it had any effect upon the little
+man. I pulled the pistol from my pocket and pointed it at him, but that
+only seemed to make it--and then I pressed the trigger....
+
+“To my horror four shots exploded before I could recover sufficient
+self-possession to loosen my hold of the butt. He fell without a word.
+I dropped the revolver and knelt by his side. I could tell he was
+dangerously wounded, and indeed I knew at that moment that nothing would
+save him. My pistol had been pointed in the region of his heart....”
+
+He shuddered, dropping his face in his hands, and the girl by his side,
+encircling his shoulder with a protecting arm, murmured something in his
+ear. Presently he recovered.
+
+“He wasn't quite dead. I heard him murmur something but I wasn't able
+to distinguish what he said. I went straight to the village and told the
+constable and had the body removed.”
+
+T. X. rose from the table and walked to the door and opened it.
+
+“Come in, constable,” he said, and when the man made his appearance,
+“I suppose you were very careful in removing this body, and you took
+everything which was lying about in the immediate vicinity'?”
+
+“Yes, sir,” replied the man, “I took his hat and his walkingstick, if
+that's what you mean.”
+
+“And the revolver!” asked T. X.
+
+The man shook his head.
+
+“There warn't any revolver, sir, except the pistol which Mr. Lexman
+had.”
+
+He fumbled in his pocket and pulled it out gingerly, and T. X. took it
+from him.
+
+“I'll look after your prisoner; you go down to the village, get any help
+you can and make a most careful search in the place where this man
+was killed and bring me the revolver which you will discover. You'll
+probably find it in a ditch by the side of the road. I'll give a
+sovereign to the man who finds it.”
+
+The constable touched his hat and went out.
+
+“It looks rather a weird case to me,” said T. X., as he came back to the
+table, “can't you see the unusual features yourself, Lexman! It isn't
+unusual for you to owe money and it isn't unusual for the usurer to
+demand the return of that money, but in this case he is asking for
+it before it was due, and further than that he was demanding it with
+threats. It is not the practice of the average money lender to go after
+his clients with a loaded revolver. Another peculiar thing is that if he
+wished to blackmail you, that is to say, bring you into contempt in
+the eyes of your friends, why did he choose to meet you in a dark and
+unfrequented road, and not in your house where the moral pressure would
+be greatest? Also, why did he write you a threatening letter which would
+certainly bring him into the grip of the law and would have saved you a
+great deal of unpleasantness if he had decided upon taking action!”
+
+He tapped his white teeth with the end of his pencil and then suddenly,
+
+“I think I'll see that letter,” he said.
+
+John Lexman rose from the sofa, crossed to the safe, unlocked it and
+was unlocking the steel drawer in which he had placed the incriminating
+document. His hand was on the key when T. X. noticed the look of
+surprise on his face.
+
+“What is it!” asked the detective suddenly.
+
+“This drawer feels very hot,” said John,--he looked round as though to
+measure the distance between the safe and the fire.
+
+T. X. laid his hand upon the front of the drawer. It was indeed warm.
+
+“Open it,” said T. X., and Lexman turned the key and pulled the drawer
+open.
+
+As he did so, the whole contents burst up in a quick blaze of flame. It
+died down immediately and left only a little coil of smoke that flowed
+from the safe into the room.
+
+“Don't touch anything inside,” said T. X. quickly.
+
+He lifted the drawer carefully and placed it under the light. In the
+bottom was no more than a few crumpled white ashes and a blister of
+paint where the flame had caught the side.
+
+“I see,” said T. X. slowly.
+
+He saw something more than that handful of ashes, he saw the deadly
+peril in which his friend was standing. Here was one half of the
+evidence in Lexman's favour gone, irredeemably.
+
+“The letter was written on a paper which was specially prepared by a
+chemical process which disintegrated the moment the paper was exposed
+to the air. Probably if you delayed putting the letter in the drawer
+another five minutes, you would have seen it burn before your eyes. As
+it was, it was smouldering before you had turned the key of the box. The
+envelope!”
+
+“Kara burnt it,” said Lexman in a low voice, “I remember seeing him take
+it up from the table and throw it in the fire.”
+
+T. X. nodded.
+
+“There remains the other half of the evidence,” he said grimly, and when
+an hour later, the village constable returned to report that in spite
+of his most careful search he had failed to discover the dead man's
+revolver, his anticipations were realized.
+
+The next morning John Lexman was lodged in Lewes gaol on a charge of
+wilful murder.
+
+
+A telegram brought Mansus from London to Beston Tracey, and T. X.
+received him in the library.
+
+“I sent for you, Mansus, because I suffer from the illusion that you
+have more brains than most of the people in my department, and that's
+not saying much.”
+
+“I am very grateful to you, sir, for putting me right with
+Commissioner,” began Mansus, but T. X. stopped him.
+
+“It is the duty of every head of departments,” he said oracularly, “to
+shield the incompetence of his subordinates. It is only by the adoption
+of some such method that the decencies of the public life can be
+observed. Now get down to this.” He gave a sketch of the case from start
+to finish in as brief a space of time as possible.
+
+“The evidence against Mr. Lexman is very heavy,” he said. “He borrowed
+money from this man, and on the man's body were found particulars of the
+very Promissory Note which Lexman signed. Why he should have brought it
+with him, I cannot say. Anyhow I doubt very much whether Mr. Lexman will
+get a jury to accept his version. Our only chance is to find the Greek's
+revolver--I don't think there's any very great chance, but if we are to
+be successful we must make a search at once.”
+
+Before he went out he had an interview with Grace. The dark shadows
+under her eyes told of a sleepless night. She was unusually pale and
+surprisingly calm.
+
+“I think there are one or two things I ought to tell you,” she said, as
+she led the way into the drawing room, closing the door behind him.
+
+“And they concern Mr. Kara, I think,” said T. X.
+
+She looked at him startled.
+
+“How did you know that?”
+
+“I know nothing.”
+
+He hesitated on the brink of a flippant claim of omniscience, but
+realizing in time the agony she must be suffering he checked his natural
+desire.
+
+“I really know nothing,” he continued, “but I guess a lot,” and that was
+as near to the truth as you might expect T. X. to reach on the spur of
+the moment.
+
+She began without preliminary.
+
+“In the first place I must tell you that Mr. Kara once asked me to marry
+him, and for reasons which I will give you, I am dreadfully afraid of
+him.”
+
+She described without reserve the meeting at Salonika and Kara's
+extravagant rage and told of the attempt which had been made upon her.
+
+“Does John know this?” asked T. X.
+
+She shook her head sadly.
+
+“I wish I had told him now,” she said. “Oh, how I wish I had!” She wrung
+her hands in an ecstasy of sorrow and remorse.
+
+T. X. looked at her sympathetically. Then he asked,
+
+“Did Mr. Kara ever discuss your husband's financial position with you!”
+
+“Never.”
+
+“How did John Lexman happen to meet Vassalaro!”
+
+“I can tell you that,” she answered, “the first time we met Mr. Kara
+in England was when we were staying at Babbacombe on a summer
+holiday--which was really a prolongation of our honeymoon. Mr. Kara came
+to stay at the same hotel. I think Mr. Vassalaro must have been there
+before; at any rate they knew one another and after Kara's introduction
+to my husband the rest was easy.
+
+“Can I do anything for John!” she asked piteously.
+
+T. X. shook his head.
+
+“So far as your story is concerned, I don't think you will advantage him
+by telling it,” he said. “There is nothing whatever to connect Kara with
+this business and you would only give your husband a great deal of pain.
+I'll do the best I can.”
+
+He held out his hand and she grasped it and somehow at that moment
+there came to T. X. Meredith a new courage, a new faith and a greater
+determination than ever to solve this troublesome mystery.
+
+He found Mansus waiting for him in a car outside and in a few minutes
+they were at the scene of the tragedy. A curious little knot of
+spectators had gathered, looking with morbid interest at the place where
+the body had been found. There was a local policeman on duty and to him
+was deputed the ungracious task of warning his fellow villagers to keep
+their distance. The ground had already been searched very carefully. The
+two roads crossed almost at right angles and at the corner of the cross
+thus formed, the hedges were broken, admitting to a field which had
+evidently been used as a pasture by an adjoining dairy farm. Some rough
+attempt had been made to close the gap with barbed wire, but it was
+possible to step over the drooping strands with little or no difficulty.
+It was to this gap that T. X. devoted his principal attention. All the
+fields had been carefully examined without result, the four drains which
+were merely the connecting pipes between ditches at the sides of the
+crossroads had been swept out and only the broken hedge and its tangle
+of bushes behind offered any prospect of the new search being rewarded.
+
+“Hullo!” said Mansus, suddenly, and stooping down he picked up something
+from the ground.
+
+T. X. took it in his hand.
+
+It was unmistakably a revolver cartridge. He marked the spot where
+it had been found by jamming his walking stick into the ground and
+continued his search, but without success.
+
+“I am afraid we shall find nothing more here,” said T. X., after half
+an hour's further search. He stood with his chin in his hand, a frown on
+his face.
+
+“Mansus,” he said, “suppose there were three people here, Lexman, the
+money lender and a third witness. And suppose this third person for some
+reason unknown was interested in what took place between the two men and
+he wanted to watch unobserved. Isn't it likely that if he, as I think,
+instigated the meeting, he would have chosen this place because this
+particular hedge gave him a chance of seeing without being seen?”
+
+Mansus thought.
+
+“He could have seen just as well from either of the other hedges, with
+less chance of detection,” he said, after a long pause.
+
+T. X. grinned.
+
+“You have the makings of a brain,” he said admiringly. “I agree with
+you. Always remember that, Mansus. That there was one occasion in your
+life when T. X. Meredith and you thought alike.”
+
+Mansus smiled a little feebly.
+
+“Of course from the point of view of the observer this was the worst
+place possible, so whoever came here, if they did come here, dropping
+revolver bullets about, must have chosen the spot because it was
+get-at-able from another direction. Obviously he couldn't come down the
+road and climb in without attracting the attention of the Greek who was
+waiting for Mr. Lexman. We may suppose there is a gate farther along the
+road, we may suppose that he entered that gate, came along the field by
+the side of the hedge and that somewhere between here and the gate, he
+threw away his cigar.”
+
+“His cigar!” said Mansus in surprise.
+
+“His cigar,” repeated T. X., “if he was alone, he would keep his cigar
+alight until the very last moment.”
+
+“He might have thrown it into the road,” said Mansus.
+
+“Don't jibber,” said T. X., and led the way along the hedge. From where
+they stood they could see the gate which led on to the road about a
+hundred yards further on. Within a dozen yards of that gate, T. X. found
+what he had been searching for, a half-smoked cigar. It was sodden with
+rain and he picked it up tenderly.
+
+“A good cigar, if I am any judge,” he said, “cut with a penknife, and
+smoked through a holder.”
+
+They reached the gate and passed through. Here they were on the road
+again and this they followed until they reached another cross road that
+to the left inclining southward to the new Eastbourne Road and that to
+the westward looking back to the Lewes-Eastbourne railway. The rain had
+obliterated much that T. X. was looking for, but presently he found a
+faint indication of a car wheel.
+
+“This is where she turned and backed,” he said, and walked slowly to the
+road on the left, “and this is where she stood. There is the grease from
+her engine.”
+
+He stooped down and moved forward in the attitude of a Russian dancer,
+“And here are the wax matches which the chauffeur struck,” he counted,
+“one, two, three, four, five, six, allow three for each cigarette on a
+boisterous night like last night, that makes three cigarettes. Here is
+a cigarette end, Mansus, Gold Flake brand,” he said, as he examined it
+carefully, “and a Gold Flake brand smokes for twelve minutes in normal
+weather, but about eight minutes in gusty weather. A car was here for
+about twenty-four minutes--what do you think of that, Mansus?”
+
+“A good bit of reasoning, T. X.,” said the other calmly, “if it happens
+to be the car you're looking for.”
+
+“I am looking for any old car,” said T. X.
+
+He found no other trace of car wheels though he carefully followed
+up the little lane until it reached the main road. After that it was
+hopeless to search because rain had fallen in the night and in the early
+hours of the morning. He drove his assistant to the railway station in
+time to catch the train at one o'clock to London.
+
+“You will go straight to Cadogan Square and arrest the chauffeur of Mr.
+Kara,” he said.
+
+“Upon what charge!” asked Mansus hurriedly.
+
+When it came to the step which T. X. thought fit to take in the
+pursuance of his duty, Mansus was beyond surprise.
+
+“You can charge him with anything you like,” said T. X., with fine
+carelessness, “probably something will occur to you on your way up to
+town. As a matter of fact the chauffeur has been called unexpectedly
+away to Greece and has probably left by this morning's train for the
+Continent. If that is so, we can do nothing, because the boat will have
+left Dover and will have landed him at Boulogne, but if by any luck you
+get him, keep him busy until I get back.”
+
+T. X. himself was a busy man that day, and it was not until night was
+falling that he again turned to Beston Tracey to find a telegram waiting
+for him. He opened it and read,
+
+“Chauffeur's name, Goole. Formerly waiter English Club, Constantinople.
+Left for east by early train this morning, his mother being ill.”
+
+“His mother ill,” said T. X. contemptuously, “how very feeble,--I should
+have thought Kara could have gone one better than that.”
+
+He was in John Lexman's study as the door opened and the maid announced,
+“Mr. Remington Kara.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+T. X. folded the telegram very carefully and slipped it into his
+waistcoat pocket.
+
+He favoured the newcomer with a little bow and taking upon himself the
+honours of the establishment, pushed a chair to his visitor.
+
+“I think you know my name,” said Kara easily, “I am a friend of poor
+Lexman's.”
+
+“So I am told,” said T. X., “but don't let your friendship for Lexman
+prevent your sitting down.”
+
+For a moment the Greek was nonplussed and then, with a little smile and
+bow, he seated himself by the writing table.
+
+“I am very distressed at this happening,” he went on, “and I am
+more distressed because I feel that as I introduced Lexman to this
+unfortunate man, I am in a sense responsible.”
+
+“If I were you,” said T. X., leaning back in the chair and looking
+half questioningly and half earnestly into the face of the other, “I
+shouldn't let that fact keep me awake at night. Most people are murdered
+as a result of an introduction. The cases where people murder total
+strangers are singularly rare. That I think is due to the insularity of
+our national character.”
+
+Again the other was taken back and puzzled by the flippancy of the man
+from whom he had expected at least the official manner.
+
+“When did you see Mr. Vassalaro last?” asked T. X. pleasantly.
+
+Kara raised his eyes as though considering.
+
+“I think it must have been nearly a week ago.”
+
+“Think again,” said T. X.
+
+For a second the Greek started and again relaxed into a smile.
+
+“I am afraid,” he began.
+
+“Don't worry about that,” said T. X., “but let me ask you this question.
+You were here last night when Mr. Lexman received a letter. That he did
+receive a letter, there is considerable evidence,” he said as he saw
+the other hesitate, “because we have the supporting statements of the
+servant and the postman.”
+
+“I was here,” said the other, deliberately, “and I was present when Mr.
+Lexman received a letter.”
+
+T. X. nodded.
+
+“A letter written on some brownish paper and rather bulky,” he
+suggested.
+
+Again there was that momentary hesitation.
+
+“I would not swear to the color of the paper or as to the bulk of the
+letter,” he said.
+
+“I should have thought you would,” suggested T. X., “because you see,
+you burnt the envelope, and I presumed you would have noticed that.”
+
+“I have no recollection of burning any envelope,” said the other easily.
+
+“At any rate,” T. X. went on, “when Mr. Lexman read this letter out to
+you...”
+
+“To which letter are you referring?” asked the other, with a lift of his
+eyebrows.
+
+“Mr. Lexman received a threatening letter,” repeated T. X. patiently,
+“which he read out to you, and which was addressed to him by Vassalaro.
+This letter was handed to you and you also read it. Mr. Lexman to your
+knowledge put the letter in his safe--in a steel drawer.”
+
+The other shook his head, smiling gently.
+
+“I am afraid you've made a great mistake,” he said almost
+apologetically, “though I have a recollection of his receiving a letter,
+I did not read it, nor was it read to me.”
+
+The eyes of T. X. narrowed to the very slits and his voice became
+metallic and hard.
+
+“And if I put you into the box, will you swear, that you did not see
+that letter, nor read it, nor have it read to you, and that you have no
+knowledge whatever of such a letter having been received by Mr. Lexman?”
+
+“Most certainly,” said the other coolly.
+
+“Would you swear that you have not seen Vassalaro for a week?”
+
+“Certainly,” smiled the Greek.
+
+“That you did not in fact see him last night,” persisted T. X., “and
+interview him on the station platform at Lewes, that you did not after
+leaving him continue on your way to London and then turn your car and
+return to the neighbourhood of Beston Tracey?”
+
+The Greek was white to the lips, but not a muscle of his face moved.
+
+“Will you also swear,” continued T. X. inexorably, “that you did not
+stand at the corner of what is known as Mitre's Lot and re-enter a gate
+near to the side where your car was, and that you did not watch the
+whole tragedy?”
+
+“I'd swear to that,” Kara's voice was strained and cracked.
+
+“Would you also swear as to the hour of your arrival in London?”
+
+“Somewhere in the region of ten or eleven,” said the Greek.
+
+T. X. smiled.
+
+“Would you swear that you did not go through Guilford at half-past
+twelve and pull up to replenish your petrol?”
+
+The Greek had now recovered his self-possession and rose.
+
+“You are a very clever man, Mr. Meredith--I think that is your name?”
+
+“That is my name,” said T. X. calmly. “There has been, no need for me to
+change it as often as you have found the necessity.”
+
+He saw the fire blazing in the other's eyes and knew that his shot had
+gone home.
+
+“I am afraid I must go,” said Kara. “I came here intending to see Mrs.
+Lexman, and I had no idea that I should meet a policeman.”
+
+“My dear Mr. Kara,” said T. X., rising and lighting a cigarette, “you
+will go through life enduring that unhappy experience.”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“Just what I say. You will always be expecting to meet one person, and
+meeting another, and unless you are very fortunate indeed, that other
+will always be a policeman.”
+
+His eyes twinkled for he had recovered from the gust of anger which had
+swept through him.
+
+“There are two pieces of evidence I require to save Mr. Lexman from very
+serious trouble,” he said, “the first of these is the letter which was
+burnt, as you know.”
+
+“Yes,” said Kara.
+
+T. X. leant across the desk.
+
+“How did you know?” he snapped.
+
+“Somebody told me, I don't know who it was.”
+
+“That's not true,” replied T. X.; “nobody knows except myself and Mrs.
+Lexman.”
+
+“But my dear good fellow,” said Kara, pulling on his gloves, “you have
+already asked me whether I didn't burn the letter.”
+
+“I said envelope,” said T. X., with a little laugh.
+
+“And you were going to say something about the other clue?”
+
+“The other is the revolver,” said T. X.
+
+“Mr. Lexman's revolver!” drawled the Greek.
+
+“That we have,” said T. X. shortly. “What we want is the weapon which
+the Greek had when he threatened Mr. Lexman.”
+
+“There, I'm afraid I cannot help you.”
+
+Kara walked to the door and T. X. followed.
+
+“I think I will see Mrs. Lexman.”
+
+“I think not,” said T. X.
+
+The other turned with a sneer.
+
+“Have you arrested her, too?” he asked.
+
+“Pull yourself together!” said T. X. coarsely. He escorted Kara to his
+waiting limousine.
+
+“You have a new chauffeur to-night, I observe,” he said.
+
+Kara towering with rage stepped daintily into the car.
+
+“If you are writing to the other you might give him my love,” said T.
+X., “and make most tender enquiries after his mother. I particularly ask
+this.”
+
+Kara said nothing until the car was out of earshot then he lay back
+on the down cushions and abandoned himself to a paroxysm of rage and
+blasphemy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Six months later T. X. Meredith was laboriously tracing an elusive line
+which occurred on an ordnance map of Sussex when the Chief Commissioner
+announced himself.
+
+Sir George described T. X. as the most wholesome corrective a public
+official could have, and never missed an opportunity of meeting his
+subordinate (as he said) for this reason.
+
+“What are you doing there?” he growled.
+
+“The lesson this morning,” said T. X. without looking up, “is maps.”
+
+Sir George passed behind his assistant and looked over his shoulder.
+
+“That is a very old map you have got there,” he said.
+
+“1876. It shows the course of a number of interesting little streams in
+this neighbourhood which have been lost sight of for one reason or
+the other by the gentleman who made the survey at a later period. I
+am perfectly sure that in one of these streams I shall find what I am
+seeking.”
+
+“You haven't given up hope, then, in regard to Lexman?”
+
+“I shall never give up hope,” said T. X., “until I am dead, and possibly
+not then.”
+
+“Let me see, what did he get--fifteen years!”
+
+“Fifteen years,” repeated T. X., “and a very fortunate man to escape
+with his life.”
+
+Sir George walked to the window and stared out on to busy Whitehall.
+
+“I am told you are quite friendly with Kara again.”
+
+T. X. made a noise which might be taken to indicate his assent to the
+statement.
+
+“I suppose you know that gentleman has made a very heroic attempt to get
+you fired,” he said.
+
+“I shouldn't wonder,” said T. X. “I made as heroic an attempt to get him
+hung, and one good turn deserves another. What did he do? See ministers
+and people?”
+
+“He did,” said Sir George.
+
+“He's a silly ass,” responded T. X.
+
+“I can understand all that”--the Chief Commissioner turned round--“but
+what I cannot understand is your apology to him.”
+
+“There are so many things you don't understand, Sir George,” said T. X.
+tartly, “that I despair of ever cataloguing them.”
+
+“You are an insolent cub,” growled his Chief. “Come to lunch.”
+
+“Where will you take me?” asked T. X. cautiously.
+
+“To my club.”
+
+“I'm sorry,” said the other, with elaborate politeness, “I have lunched
+once at your club. Need I say more?”
+
+He smiled, as he worked after his Chief had gone, at the recollection
+of Kara's profound astonishment and the gratification he strove so
+desperately to disguise.
+
+Kara was a vain man, immensely conscious of his good looks, conscious of
+his wealth. He had behaved most handsomely, for not only had he accepted
+the apology, but he left nothing undone to show his desire to create a
+good impression upon the man who had so grossly insulted him.
+
+T. X. had accepted an invitation to stay a weekend at Kara's “little
+place in the country,” and had found there assembled everything that
+the heart could desire in the way of fellowship, eminent politicians
+who might conceivably be of service to an ambitious young Assistant
+Commissioner of Police, beautiful ladies to interest and amuse him. Kara
+had even gone to the length of engaging a theatrical company to play
+“Sweet Lavender,” and for this purpose the big ballroom at Hever Court
+had been transformed into a theatre.
+
+As he was undressing for bed that night T. X. remembered that he had
+mentioned to Kara that “Sweet Lavender” was his favorite play, and he
+realized that the entertainment was got up especially for his benefit.
+
+In a score of other ways Kara had endeavoured to consolidate the
+friendship. He gave the young Commissioner advice about a railway
+company which was operating in Asia Minor, and the shares of which stood
+a little below par. T. X. thanked him for the advice, and did not take
+it, nor did he feel any regret when the shares rose 3 pounds in as many
+weeks.
+
+T. X. had superintended the disposal of Beston Priory. He had the
+furniture removed to London, and had taken a flat for Grace Lexman.
+
+She had a small income of her own, and this, added to the large
+royalties which came to her (as she was bitterly conscious) in
+increasing volume as the result of the publicity of the trial, placed
+her beyond fear of want.
+
+“Fifteen years,” murmured T. X., as he worked and whistled.
+
+There had been no hope for John Lexman from the start. He was in debt
+to the man he killed. His story of threatening letters was not
+substantiated. The revolver which he said had been flourished at him
+had never been found. Two people believed implicitly in the story, and a
+sympathetic Home Secretary had assured T. X. personally that if he could
+find the revolver and associate it with the murder beyond any doubt,
+John Lexman would be pardoned.
+
+Every stream in the neighbourhood had been dragged. In one case a small
+river had been dammed, and the bed had been carefully dried and sifted,
+but there was no trace of the weapon, and T. X. had tried methods more
+effective and certainly less legal.
+
+A mysterious electrician had called at 456 Cadogan Square in Kara's
+absence, and he was armed with such indisputable authority that he
+was permitted to penetrate to Kara's private room, in order to examine
+certain fitments.
+
+Kara returning next day thought no more of the matter when it was
+reported to him, until going to his safe that night he discovered that
+it had been opened and ransacked.
+
+As it happened, most of Kara's valuable and confidential possessions
+were at the bank. In a fret of panic and at considerable cost he had
+the safe removed and another put in its place of such potency that the
+makers offered to indemnify him against any loss from burglary.
+
+T. X. finished his work, washed his hands, and was drying them when
+Mansus came bursting into the room. It was not usual for Mansus to
+burst into anywhere. He was a slow, methodical, painstaking man, with a
+deliberate and an official, manner.
+
+“What's the matter?” asked T. X. quickly.
+
+“We didn't search Vassalaro's lodgings,” cried Mansus breathlessly. “It
+just occurred to me as I was coming over Westminster Bridge. I was on
+top of a bus--”
+
+“Wake up!” said T. X. “You're amongst friends and cut all that 'bus'
+stuff out. Of course we searched Vassalaro's lodgings!”
+
+“No, we didn't, sir,” said the other triumphantly. “He lived in Great
+James Street.”
+
+“He lived in the Adelphi,” corrected T. X.
+
+“There were two places where he lived,” said Mansus.
+
+“When did you learn this?” asked his Chief, dropping his flippancy.
+
+“This morning. I was on a bus coming across Westminster Bridge, and
+there were two men in front of me, and I heard the word 'Vassalaro' and
+naturally I pricked up my ears.”
+
+“It was very unnatural, but proceed,” said T. X.
+
+“One of the men--a very respectable person--said, 'That chap Vassalaro
+used to lodge in my place, and I've still got a lot of his things. What
+do you think I ought to do?'”
+
+“And you said,” suggested the other.
+
+“I nearly frightened his life out of him,” said Mansus. “I said, 'I am a
+police officer and I want you to come along with me.'”
+
+“And of course he shut up and would not say another word,” said T. X.
+
+“That's true, sir,” said Mansus, “but after awhile I got him to talk.
+Vassalaro lived in Great James Street, 604, on the third floor. In fact,
+some of his furniture is there still. He had a good reason for keeping
+two addresses by all accounts.”
+
+T. X. nodded wisely.
+
+“What was her name?” he asked.
+
+“He had a wife,” said the other, “but she left him about four months
+before he was killed. He used the Adelphi address for business purposes
+and apparently he slept two or three nights of the week at Great James
+Street. I have told the man to leave everything as it is, and that we
+will come round.”
+
+Ten minutes later the two officers were in the somewhat gloomy
+apartments which Vassalaro had occupied.
+
+The landlord explained that most of the furniture was his, but that
+there were certain articles which were the property of the deceased
+man. He added, somewhat unnecessarily, that the late tenant owed him six
+months' rent.
+
+The articles which had been the property of Vassalaro included a tin
+trunk, a small writing bureau, a secretaire bookcase and a few clothes.
+The secretaire was locked, as was the writing bureau. The tin box, which
+had little or nothing of interest, was unfastened.
+
+The other locks needed very little attention. Without any difficulty
+Mansus opened both. The leaf of the bureau, when let down, formed
+the desk, and piled up inside was a whole mass of letters opened and
+unopened, accounts, note-books and all the paraphernalia which an untidy
+man collects.
+
+Letter by letter, T. X. went through the accumulation without finding
+anything to help him. Then his eye was attracted by a small tin case
+thrust into one of the oblong pigeon holes at the back of the desk. This
+he pulled out and opened and found a small wad of paper wrapped in tin
+foil.
+
+“Hello, hello!” said T. X., and he was pardonably exhilarated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+A Man stood in the speckless courtyard before the Governor's house at
+Dartmoor gaol. He wore the ugly livery of shame which marks the convict.
+His head was clipped short, and there was two days' growth of beard upon
+his haggard face. Standing with his hands behind him, he waited for the
+moment when he would be ordered to his work.
+
+John Lexman--A. O. 43--looked up at the blue sky as he had looked so
+many times from the exercise yard, and wondered what the day would bring
+forth. A day to him was the beginning and the end of an eternity. He
+dare not let his mind dwell upon the long aching years ahead. He dare
+not think of the woman he left, or let his mind dwell upon the agony
+which she was enduring. He had disappeared from the world, the world he
+loved, and the world that knew him, and all that there was in life; all
+that was worth while had been crushed and obliterated into the granite
+of the Princetown quarries, and its wide horizon shrunken by the gaunt
+moorland with its menacing tors.
+
+New interests made up his existence. The quality of the food was one.
+The character of the book he would receive from the prison library
+another. The future meant Sunday chapel; the present whatever task they
+found him. For the day he was to paint some doors and windows of an
+outlying cottage. A cottage occupied by a warder who, for some reason,
+on the day previous, had spoken to him with a certain kindness and a
+certain respect which was unusual.
+
+“Face the wall,” growled a voice, and mechanically he turned, his hands
+still behind him, and stood staring at the grey wall of the prison
+storehouse.
+
+He heard the shuffling feet of the quarry gang, his ears caught the
+clink of the chains which bound them together. They were desperate men,
+peculiarly interesting to him, and he had watched their faces furtively
+in the early period of his imprisonment.
+
+He had been sent to Dartmoor after spending three months in Wormwood
+Scrubbs. Old hands had told him variously that he was fortunate or
+unlucky. It was usual to have twelve months at the Scrubbs before
+testing the life of a convict establishment. He believed there was some
+talk of sending him to Parkhurst, and here he traced the influence which
+T. X. would exercise, for Parkhurst was a prisoner's paradise.
+
+He heard his warder's voice behind him.
+
+“Right turn, 43, quick march.”
+
+He walked ahead of the armed guard, through the great and gloomy gates
+of the prison, turned sharply to the right, and walked up the village
+street toward the moors, beyond the village of Princetown, and on the
+Tavistock Road where were two or three cottages which had been lately
+taken by the prison staff; and it was to the decoration of one of these
+that A. O. 43 had been sent.
+
+The house was as yet without a tenant.
+
+A paper-hanger under the charge of another warder was waiting for the
+arrival of the painter. The two warders exchanged greetings, and the
+first went off leaving the other in charge of both men.
+
+For an hour they worked in silence under the eyes of the guard.
+Presently the warder went outside, and John Lexman had an opportunity of
+examining his fellow sufferer.
+
+He was a man of twenty-four or twenty-five, lithe and alert. By no means
+bad looking, he lacked that indefinable suggestion of animalism which
+distinguished the majority of the inhabitants at Dartmoor.
+
+They waited until they heard the warder's step clear the passage, and
+until his iron-shod boots were tramping over the cobbled path which led
+from the door, through the tiny garden to the road, before the second
+man spoke.
+
+“What are you in for?” he asked, in a low voice.
+
+“Murder,” said John Lexman, laconically.
+
+He had answered the question before, and had noticed with a little
+amusement the look of respect which came into the eyes of the
+questioner.
+
+“What have you got!”
+
+“Fifteen years,” said the other.
+
+“That means 11 years and 9 months,” said the first man. “You've never
+been here before, I suppose?”
+
+“Hardly,” said Lexman, drily.
+
+“I was here when I was a kid,” confessed the paper-hanger. “I am going
+out next week.”
+
+John Lexman looked at him enviously. Had the man told him that he had
+inherited a great fortune and a greater title his envy would not have
+been so genuine.
+
+Going out!
+
+The drive in the brake to the station, the ride to London in creased,
+but comfortable clothing, free as the air, at liberty to go to bed and
+rise when he liked, to choose his own dinner, to answer no call save the
+call of his conscience, to see--he checked himself.
+
+“What are you in for?” he asked in self-defence.
+
+“Conspiracy and fraud,” said the other cheerfully. “I was put away by
+a woman after three of us had got clear with 12,000 pounds. Damn rough
+luck, wasn't it?”
+
+John nodded.
+
+It was curious, he thought, how sympathetic one grows with these
+exponents of crimes. One naturally adopts their point of view and sees
+life through their distorted vision.
+
+“I bet I'm not given away with the next lot,” the prisoner went on.
+“I've got one of the biggest ideas I've ever had, and I've got a real
+good man to help me.”
+
+“How?” asked John, in surprise.
+
+The man jerked his head in the direction of the prison.
+
+“Larry Green,” he said briefly. “He's coming out next month, too, and we
+are all fixed up proper. We are going to get the pile and then we're off
+to South America, and you won't see us for dust.”
+
+Though he employed all the colloquialisms which were common, his tone
+was that of a man of education, and yet there was something in his
+address which told John as clearly as though the man had confessed as
+much, that he had never occupied any social position in life.
+
+The warder's step on the stones outside reduced them to silence.
+Suddenly his voice came up the stairs.
+
+“Forty-three,” he called sharply, “I want you down here.”
+
+John took his paint pot and brush and went clattering down the
+uncarpeted stairs.
+
+“Where's the other man?” asked the warder, in a low voice.
+
+“He's upstairs in the back room.”
+
+The warder stepped out of the door and looked left and right. Coming up
+from Princetown was a big, grey car.
+
+“Put down your paint pot,” he said.
+
+His voice was shaking with excitement.
+
+“I am going upstairs. When that car comes abreast of the gate, ask no
+questions and jump into it. Get down into the bottom and pull a sack
+over you, and do not get up until the car stops.”
+
+The blood rushed to John Lexman's head, and he staggered.
+
+“My God!” he whispered.
+
+“Do as I tell you,” hissed the warder.
+
+Like an automaton John put down his brushes, and walked slowly to the
+gate. The grey car was crawling up the hill, and the face of the driver
+was half enveloped in a big rubber mask. Through the two great goggles
+John could see little to help him identify the man. As the machine came
+up to the gate, he leapt into the tonneau and sank instantly to the
+bottom. As he did so he felt the car leap forward underneath him. Now
+it was going fast, now faster, now it rocked and swayed as it gathered
+speed. He felt it sweeping down hill and up hill, and once he heard a
+hollow rumble as it crossed a wooden bridge.
+
+He could not detect from his hiding place in what direction they were
+going, but he gathered they had switched off to the left and were making
+for one of the wildest parts of the moor. Never once did he feel the car
+slacken its pace, until, with a grind of brakes, it stopped suddenly.
+
+“Get out,” said a voice.
+
+John Lexman threw off the cover and leapt out and as he did so the car
+turned and sped back the way it had come.
+
+For a moment he thought he was alone, and looked around. Far away in
+the distance he saw the grey bulk of Princetown Gaol. It was an accident
+that he should see it, but it so happened that a ray of the sun fell
+athwart it and threw it into relief.
+
+He was alone on the moors! Where could he go?
+
+He turned at the sound of a voice.
+
+He was standing on the slope of a small tor. At the foot there was a
+smooth stretch of green sward. It was on this stretch that the people of
+Dartmoor held their pony races in the summer months. There was no sign
+of horses; but only a great bat-like machine with out-stretched pinions
+of taut white canvas, and by that machine a man clad from head to foot
+in brown overalls.
+
+John stumbled down the slope. As he neared the machine he stopped and
+gasped.
+
+“Kara,” he said, and the brown man smiled.
+
+“But, I do not understand. What are you going to do!” asked Lexman, when
+he had recovered from his surprise.
+
+“I am going to take you to a place of safety,” said the other.
+
+“I have no reason to be grateful to you, as yet, Kara,” breathed Lexman.
+“A word from you could have saved me.”
+
+“I could not lie, my dear Lexman. And honestly, I had forgotten the
+existence of the letter; if that is what you are referring to, but I am
+trying to do what I can for you and for your wife.”
+
+“My wife!”
+
+“She is waiting for you,” said the other.
+
+He turned his head, listening.
+
+Across the moor came the dull sullen boom of a gun.
+
+“You haven't time for argument. They discovered your escape,” he said.
+“Get in.”
+
+John clambered up into the frail body of the machine and Kara followed.
+
+“This is a self-starter,” he said, “one of the newest models of
+monoplanes.”
+
+He clicked over a lever and with a roar the big three-bladed tractor
+screw spun.
+
+The aeroplane moved forward with a jerk, ran with increasing gait for a
+hundred yards, and then suddenly the jerky progress ceased. The machine
+swayed gently from side to side, and looking over, the passenger saw the
+ground recede beneath him.
+
+Up, up, they climbed in one long sweeping ascent, passing through
+drifting clouds till the machine soared like a bird above the blue sea.
+
+John Lexman looked down. He saw the indentations of the coast and
+recognized the fringe of white houses that stood for Torquay, but in an
+incredibly short space of time all signs of the land were blotted out.
+
+Talking was impossible. The roar of the engines defied penetration.
+
+Kara was evidently a skilful pilot. From time to time he consulted
+the compass on the board before him, and changed his course ever so
+slightly. Presently he released one hand from the driving wheel, and
+scribbling on a little block of paper which was inserted in a pocket at
+the side of the seat he passed it back.
+
+John Lexman read:
+
+     “If you cannot swim there is a life belt under your seat.”
+
+John nodded.
+
+Kara was searching the sea for something, and presently he found it.
+Viewed from the height at which they flew it looked no more than a white
+speck in a great blue saucer, but presently the machine began to dip,
+falling at a terrific rate of speed, which took away the breath of the
+man who was hanging on with both hands to the dangerous seat behind.
+
+He was deadly cold, but had hardly noticed the fact. It was all so
+incredible, so impossible. He expected to wake up and wondered if the
+prison was also part of the dream.
+
+Now he saw the point for which Kara was making.
+
+A white steam yacht, long and narrow of beam, was steaming slowly
+westward. He could see the feathery wake in her rear, and as the
+aeroplane fell he had time to observe that a boat had been put off. Then
+with a jerk the monoplane flattened out and came like a skimming bird to
+the surface of the water; her engines stopped.
+
+“We ought to be able to keep afloat for ten minutes,” said Kara, “and by
+that time they will pick us up.”
+
+His voice was high and harsh in the almost painful silence which
+followed the stoppage of the engines.
+
+In less than five minutes the boat had come alongside, manned, as Lexman
+gathered from a glimpse of the crew, by Greeks. He scrambled aboard
+and five minutes later he was standing on the white deck of the yacht,
+watching the disappearing tail of the monoplane. Kara was by his side.
+
+“There goes fifteen hundred pounds,” said the Greek, with a smile, “add
+that to the two thousand I paid the warder and you have a tidy sum-but
+some things are worth all the money in the world!”
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+T. X. came from Downing Street at 11 o'clock one night, and his heart
+was filled with joy and gratitude.
+
+He swung his stick to the common danger of the public, but the policeman
+on point duty at the end of the street, who saw him, recognized and
+saluted him, did not think it fit to issue any official warning.
+
+He ran up the stairs to his office, and found Mansus reading the evening
+paper.
+
+“My poor, dumb beast,” said T. X. “I am afraid I have kept you waiting
+for a very long time, but tomorrow you and I will take a little journey
+to Devonshire. It will be good for you, Mansus--where did you get that
+ridiculous name, by the way!”
+
+“M. or N.,” replied Mansus, laconically.
+
+“I repeat that there is the dawn of an intellect in you,” said T. X.,
+offensively.
+
+He became more serious as he took from a pocket inside his waistcoat a
+long blue envelope containing the paper which had cost him so much to
+secure.
+
+“Finding the revolver was a master-stroke of yours, Mansus,” he said,
+and he was in earnest as he spoke.
+
+The man coloured with pleasure for the subordinates of T. X. loved him,
+and a word of praise was almost equal to promotion. It was on the advice
+of Mansus that the road from London to Lewes had been carefully covered
+and such streams as passed beneath that road had been searched.
+
+The revolver had been found after the third attempt between Gatwick and
+Horsley. Its identification was made easier by the fact that Vassalaro's
+name was engraved on the butt. It was rather an ornate affair and in its
+earlier days had been silver plated; the handle was of mother-o'-pearl.
+
+“Obviously the gift of one brigand to another,” was T. X.'s comment.
+
+Armed with this, his task would have been fairly easy, but when to this
+evidence he added a rough draft of the threatening letter which he had
+found amongst Vassalaro's belongings, and which had evidently been taken
+down at dictation, since some of the words were misspelt and had been
+corrected by another hand, the case was complete.
+
+But what clinched the matter was the finding of a wad of that peculiar
+chemical paper, a number of sheets of which T. X. had ignited for the
+information of the Chief Commissioner and the Home Secretary by simply
+exposing them for a few seconds to the light of an electric lamp.
+
+Instantly it had filled the Home Secretary's office with a pungent
+and most disagreeable smoke, for which he was heartily cursed by his
+superiors. But it had rounded off the argument.
+
+He looked at his watch.
+
+“I wonder if it is too late to see Mrs. Lexman,” he said.
+
+“I don't think any hour would be too late,” suggested Mansus.
+
+“You shall come and chaperon me,” said his superior.
+
+But a disappointment awaited. Mrs. Lexman was not in and neither the
+ringing at her electric bell nor vigorous applications to the knocker
+brought any response. The hall porter of the flats where she lived
+was under the impression that Mrs. Lexman had gone out of town. She
+frequently went out on Saturdays and returned on the Monday and, he
+thought, occasionally on Tuesdays.
+
+It happened that this particular night was a Monday night and T. X.
+was faced with a dilemma. The night porter, who had only the vaguest
+information on the subject, thought that the day porter might know more,
+and aroused him from his sleep.
+
+Yes, Mrs. Lexman had gone. She went on the Sunday, an unusual day to
+pay a week-end visit, and she had taken with her two bags. The porter
+ventured the opinion that she was rather excited, but when asked to
+define the symptoms relapsed into a chaos of incoherent “you-knows” and
+“what-I-means.”
+
+“I don't like this,” said T. X., suddenly. “Does anybody know that we
+have made these discoveries?”
+
+“Nobody outside the office,” said Mansus, “unless, unless...”
+
+“Unless what?” asked the other, irritably. “Don't be a jimp, Mansus. Get
+it off your mind. What is it?”
+
+“I am wondering,” said Mansus slowly, “if the landlord at Great James
+Street said anything. He knows we have made a search.”
+
+“We can easily find that out,” said T. X.
+
+They hailed a taxi and drove to Great James Street. That respectable
+thoroughfare was wrapped in sleep and it was some time before the
+landlord could be aroused. Recognizing T. X. he checked his sarcasm,
+which he had prepared for a keyless lodger, and led the way into the
+drawing room.
+
+“You didn't tell me not to speak about it, Mr. Meredith,” he said, in an
+aggrieved tone, “and as a matter of fact I have spoken to nobody except
+the gentleman who called the same day.”
+
+“What did he want?” asked T. X.
+
+“He said he had only just discovered that Mr. Vassalaro had stayed with
+me and he wanted to pay whatever rent was due,” replied the other.
+
+“What like of man was he?” asked T. X.
+
+The brief description the man gave sent a cold chill to the
+Commissioner's heart.
+
+“Kara for a ducat!” he said, and swore long and variously.
+
+“Cadogan Square,” he ordered.
+
+His ring was answered promptly. Mr. Kara was out of town, had indeed
+been out of town since Saturday. This much the man-servant explained
+with a suspicious eye upon his visitors, remembering that his
+predecessor had lost his job from a too confiding friendliness with
+spurious electric fitters. He did not know when Mr. Kara would return,
+perhaps it would be a long time and perhaps a short time. He might come
+back that night or he might not.
+
+“You are wasting your young life,” said T. X. bitterly. “You ought to be
+a fortune teller.”
+
+“This settles the matter,” he said, in the cab on the way back. “Find
+out the first train for Tavistock in the morning and wire the George
+Hotel to have a car waiting.”
+
+“Why not go to-night?” suggested the other. “There is the midnight
+train. It is rather slow, but it will get you there by six or seven in
+the morning.”
+
+“Too late,” he said, “unless you can invent a method of getting from
+here to Paddington in about fifty seconds.”
+
+The morning journey to Devonshire was a dispiriting one despite the
+fineness of the day. T. X. had an uncomfortable sense that something
+distressing had happened. The run across the moor in the fresh spring
+air revived him a little.
+
+As they spun down to the valley of the Dart, Mansus touched his arm.
+
+“Look at that,” he said, and pointed to the blue heavens where, a mile
+above their heads, a white-winged aeroplane, looking no larger than a
+very distant dragon fly, shimmered in the sunlight.
+
+“By Jove!” said T. X. “What an excellent way for a man to escape!”
+
+“It's about the only way,” said Mansus.
+
+The significance of the aeroplane was borne in upon T. X. a few minutes
+later when he was held up by an armed guard. A glance at his card was
+enough to pass him.
+
+“What is the matter?” he asked.
+
+“A prisoner has escaped,” said the sentry.
+
+“Escaped--by aeroplane?” asked T. X.
+
+“I don't know anything about aeroplanes, sir. All I know is that one of
+the working party got away.”
+
+The car came to the gates of the prison and T. X. sprang out, followed
+by his assistant. He had no difficulty in finding the Governor, a
+greatly perturbed man, for an escape is a very serious matter.
+
+The official was inclined to be brusque in his manner, but again the
+magic card produced a soothing effect.
+
+“I am rather rattled,” said the Governor. “One of my men has got away. I
+suppose you know that?”
+
+“And I am afraid another of your men is going away, sir,” said T. X.,
+who had a curious reverence for military authority. He produced his
+paper and laid it on the governor's table.
+
+“This is an order for the release of John Lexman, convicted under
+sentence of fifteen years penal servitude.”
+
+The Governor looked at it.
+
+“Dated last night,” he said, and breathed a long sigh of relief. “Thank
+the Lord!--that is the man who escaped!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Two years after the events just described, T. X. journeying up to London
+from Bath was attracted by a paragraph in the Morning Post. It told him
+briefly that Mr. Remington Kara, the influential leader of the Greek
+Colony, had been the guest of honor at a dinner of the Hellenic Society.
+
+T. X. had only seen Kara for a brief space of time following that
+tragic morning, when he had discovered not only that his best friend had
+escaped from Dartmoor prison and disappeared, as it were, from the world
+at a moment when his pardon had been signed, but that that friend's wife
+had also vanished from the face of the earth.
+
+At the same time--it might, as even T. X. admitted, have been the
+veriest coincidence that Kara had also cleared out of London to reappear
+at the end of six months. Any question addressed to him, concerning the
+whereabouts of the two unhappy people, was met with a bland expression
+of ignorance as to their whereabouts.
+
+John Lexman was somewhere in the world, hiding as he believed from
+justice, and with him was his wife. T. X. had no doubt in his mind as to
+this solution of the puzzle. He had caused to be published the story
+of the pardon and the circumstances under which that pardon had been
+secured, and he had, moreover, arranged for an advertisement to be
+inserted in the principal papers of every European country.
+
+It was a moot question amongst the departmental lawyers as to whether
+John Lexman was not guilty of a technical and punishable offence for
+prison breaking, but this possibility did not keep T. X. awake at
+nights. The circumstances of the escape had been carefully examined. The
+warder responsible had been discharged from the service, and had almost
+immediately purchased for himself a beer house in Falmouth, for a sum
+which left no doubt in the official mind that he had been the recipient
+of a heavy bribe.
+
+Who had been the guiding spirit in that escape--Mrs. Lexman, or Kara?
+
+It was impossible to connect Kara with the event. The motor car had
+been traced to Exeter, where it had been hired by a “foreign-looking
+gentleman,” but the chauffeur, whoever he was, had made good his
+escape. An inspection of Kara's hangars at Wembley showed that his two
+monoplanes had not been removed, and T. X. failed entirely to trace
+the owner of the machine he had seen flying over Dartmoor on the fatal
+morning.
+
+T. X. was somewhat baffled and a little amused by the disinclination
+of the authorities to believe that the escape had been effected by
+this method at all. All the events of the trial came back to him, as he
+watched the landscape spinning past.
+
+He set down the newspaper with a little sigh, put his feet on the
+cushions of the opposite seat and gave himself up to reverie. Presently
+he returned to his journals and searched them idly for something
+to interest him in the final stretch of journey between Newbury and
+Paddington.
+
+Presently he found it in a two column article with the uninspiring
+title, “The Mineral Wealth of Tierra del Fuego.” It was written
+brightly with a style which was at once easy and informative. It told of
+adventures in the marshes behind St. Sebastian Bay and journeys up the
+Guarez Celman river, of nights spent in primeval forests and ended in
+a geological survey, wherein the commercial value of syenite, porphyry,
+trachite and dialite were severally canvassed.
+
+The article was signed “G. G.” It is said of T. X. that his greatest
+virtue was his curiosity. He had at the tip of his fingers the names
+of all the big explorers and author-travellers, and for some reason he
+could not place “G. G.” to his satisfaction, in fact he had an absurd
+desire to interpret the initials into “George Grossmith.” His inability
+to identify the writer irritated him, and his first act on reaching his
+office was to telephone to one of the literary editors of the Times whom
+he knew.
+
+“Not my department,” was the chilly reply, “and besides we never give
+away the names of our contributors. Speaking as a person outside the
+office I should say that 'G. G.' was 'George Gathercole' the explorer
+you know, the fellow who had an arm chewed off by a lion or something.”
+
+“George Gathercole!” repeated T. X. “What an ass I am.”
+
+“Yes,” said the voice at the other end the wire, and he had rung off
+before T. X. could think of something suitable to say.
+
+Having elucidated this little side-line of mystery, the matter passed
+from the young Commissioner's mind. It happened that morning that his
+work consisted of dealing with John Lexman's estate.
+
+With the disappearance of the couple he had taken over control of
+their belongings. It had not embarrassed him to discover that he was an
+executor under Lexman's will, for he had already acted as trustee to the
+wife's small estate, and had been one of the parties to the ante-nuptial
+contract which John Lexman had made before his marriage.
+
+The estate revenues had increased very considerably. All the vanished
+author's books were selling as they had never sold before, and the
+executor's work was made the heavier by the fact that Grace Lexman
+had possessed an aunt who had most inconsiderately died, leaving a
+considerable fortune to her “unhappy niece.”
+
+“I will keep the trusteeship another year,” he told the solicitor who
+came to consult him that morning. “At the end of that time I shall go to
+the court for relief.”
+
+“Do you think they will ever turn up?” asked the solicitor, an elderly
+and unimaginative man.
+
+“Of course, they'll turn up!” said T. X. impatiently; “all the heroes of
+Lexman's books turn up sooner or later. He will discover himself to us
+at a suitable moment, and we shall be properly thrilled.”
+
+That Lexman would return he was sure. It was a faith from which he did
+not swerve.
+
+He had as implicit a confidence that one day or other Kara, the
+magnificent, would play into his hands.
+
+There were some queer stories in circulation concerning the Greek,
+but on the whole they were stories and rumours which were difficult to
+separate from the malicious gossip which invariably attaches itself to
+the rich and to the successful.
+
+One of these was that Kara desired something more than an Albanian
+chieftainship, which he undoubtedly enjoyed. There were whispers of
+wider and higher ambitions. Though his father had been born a Greek, he
+had indubitably descended in a direct line from one of those old Mprets
+of Albania, who had exercised their brief authority over that turbulent
+land.
+
+The man's passion was for power. To this end he did not spare himself.
+It was said that he utilized his vast wealth for this reason, and none
+other, and that whatever might have been the irregularities of his
+youth--and there were adduced concrete instances--he was working toward
+an end with a singleness of purpose, from which it was difficult to
+withhold admiration.
+
+T. X. kept in his locked desk a little red book, steel bound and triple
+locked, which he called his “Scandalaria.” In this he inscribed in his
+own irregular writing the titbits which might not be published, and
+which often helped an investigator to light upon the missing threads
+of a problem. In truth he scorned no source of information, and was
+conscienceless in the compilation of this somewhat chaotic record.
+
+The affairs of John Lexman recalled Kara, and Kara's great reception.
+Mansus would have made arrangements to secure a verbatim report of the
+speeches which were made, and these would be in his hands by the night.
+Mansus did not tell him that Kara was financing some very influential
+people indeed, that a certain Under-secretary of State with a great
+number of very influential relations had been saved from bankruptcy by
+the timely advances which Kara had made. This T. X. had obtained through
+sources which might be hastily described as discreditable. Mansus knew
+of the baccarat establishment in Albemarle Street, but he did not know
+that the neurotic wife of a very great man indeed, no less than the
+Minister of Justice, was a frequent visitor to that establishment, and
+that she had lost in one night some 6,000 pounds. In these circumstances
+it was remarkable, thought T. X., that she should report to the police
+so small a matter as the petty pilfering of servants. This, however,
+she had done and whilst the lesser officers of Scotland Yard were
+interrogating pawnbrokers, the men higher up were genuinely worried by
+the lady's own lapses from grace.
+
+It was all sordid but, unfortunately, conventional, because highly
+placed people will always do underbred things, where money or women
+are concerned, but it was necessary, for the proper conduct of the
+department which T. X. directed, that, however sordid and however
+conventional might be the errors which the great ones of the earth
+committed, they should be filed for reference.
+
+The motto which T. X. went upon in life was, “You never know.”
+
+The Minister of Justice was a very important person, for he was a
+personal friend of half the monarchs of Europe. A poor man, with two or
+three thousand a year of his own, with no very definite political
+views and uncommitted to the more violent policies of either party, he
+succeeded in serving both, with profit to himself, and without earning
+the obloquy of either. Though he did not pursue the blatant policy
+of the Vicar of Bray, yet it is fact which may be confirmed from
+the reader's own knowledge, that he served in four different
+administrations, drawing the pay and emoluments of his office from each,
+though the fundamental policies of those four governments were distinct.
+
+Lady Bartholomew, the wife of this adaptable Minister, had recently
+departed for San Remo. The newspapers announced the fact and spoke
+vaguely of a breakdown which prevented the lady from fulfilling her
+social engagements.
+
+T. X., ever a Doubting Thomas, could trace no visit of nerve specialist,
+nor yet of the family practitioner, to the official residence in Downing
+Street, and therefore he drew conclusions. In his own “Who's Who” T.
+X. noted the hobbies of his victims which, by the way, did not always
+coincide with the innocent occupations set against their names in the
+more pretentious volume. Their follies and their weaknesses found a
+place and were recorded at a length (as it might seem to the uninformed
+observer) beyond the limit which charity allowed.
+
+Lady Mary Bartholomew's name appeared not once, but many times, in the
+erratic records which T. X. kept. There was a plain matter-of-fact and
+wholly unobjectionable statement that she was born in 1874, that she was
+the seventh daughter of the Earl of Balmorey, that she had one daughter
+who rejoiced in the somewhat unpromising name of Belinda Mary, and such
+further information as a man might get without going to a great deal of
+trouble.
+
+T. X., refreshing his memory from the little red book, wondered what
+unexpected tragedy had sent Lady Bartholomew out of London in the middle
+of the season. The information was that the lady was fairly well off at
+this moment, and this fact made matters all the more puzzling and
+almost induced him to believe that, after all, the story was true, and a
+nervous breakdown really was the cause of her sudden departure. He sent
+for Mansus.
+
+“You saw Lady Bartholomew off at Charing Cross, I suppose?”
+
+Mansus nodded.
+
+“She went alone?”
+
+“She took her maid, but otherwise she was alone. I thought she looked
+ill.”
+
+“She has been looking ill for months past,” said T. X., without any
+visible expression of sympathy.
+
+“Did she take Belinda Mary?”
+
+Mansus was puzzled. “Belinda Mary?” he repeated slowly. “Oh, you mean
+the daughter. No, she's at a school somewhere in France.”
+
+T. X. whistled a snatch of a popular song, closed the little red book
+with a snap and replaced it in his desk.
+
+“I wonder where on earth people dig up names like Belinda Mary?” he
+mused. “Belinda Mary must be rather a weird little animal--the Lord
+forgive me for speaking so about my betters! If heredity counts for
+anything she ought to be something between a head waiter and a pack of
+cards. Have you lost anything'?”
+
+Mansus was searching his pockets.
+
+“I made a few notes, some questions I wanted to ask you about and
+Lady Bartholomew was the subject of one of them. I have had her under
+observation for six months; do you want it kept up?”
+
+T. X. thought awhile, then shook his head.
+
+“I am only interested in Lady Bartholomew in so far as Kara is
+interested in her. There is a criminal for you, my friend!” he added,
+admiringly.
+
+Mansus busily engaged in going through the bundles of letters, slips
+of paper and little notebooks he had taken from his pocket, sniffed
+audibly.
+
+“Have you a cold?” asked T. X. politely.
+
+“No, sir,” was the reply, “only I haven't much opinion of Kara as a
+criminal. Besides, what has he got to be a criminal about? He has all
+that he requires in the money department, he's one of the most popular
+people in London, and certainly one of the best-looking men I've ever
+seen in my life. He needs nothing.”
+
+T. X. regarded him scornfully.
+
+“You're a poor blind brute,” he said, shaking his head; don't you know
+that great criminals are never influenced by material desires, or by
+the prospect of concrete gains? The man, who robs his employer's till
+in order to give the girl of his heart the 25-pearl and ruby brooch her
+soul desires, gains nothing but the glow of satisfaction which comes to
+the man who is thought well of. The majority of crimes in the world are
+committed by people for the same reason--they want to be thought well
+of. Here is Doctor X. who murdered his wife because she was a drunkard
+and a slut, and he dared not leave her for fear the neighbours would
+have doubts as to his respectability. Here is another gentleman who
+murders his wives in their baths in order that he should keep up some
+sort of position and earn the respect of his friends and his associates.
+Nothing roused him more quickly to a frenzy of passion than the
+suggestion that he was not respectable. Here is the great financier, who
+has embezzled a million and a quarter, not because he needed money,
+but because people looked up to him. Therefore, he must build
+great mansions, submarine pleasure courts and must lay out huge
+estates--because he wished that he should be thought well of.
+
+Mansus sniffed again.
+
+“What about the man who half murders his wife, does he do that to be
+well thought of?” he asked, with a tinge of sarcasm.
+
+T. X. looked at him pityingly.
+
+“The low-brow who beats his wife, my poor Mansus,” he said, “does so
+because she doesn't think well of him. That is our ruling passion,
+our national characteristic, the primary cause of most crimes, big or
+little. That is why Kara is a bad criminal and will, as I say, end his
+life very violently.”
+
+He took down his glossy silk hat from the peg and slipped into his
+overcoat.
+
+“I am going down to see my friend Kara,” he said. “I have a feeling that
+I should like to talk with him. He might tell me something.”
+
+His acquaintance with Kara's menage had been mere hearsay. He had
+interviewed the Greek once after his return, but since all his efforts
+to secure information concerning the whereabouts of John Lexman and
+his wife--the main reason for his visit--had been in vain, he had not
+repeated his visit.
+
+The house in Cadogan Square was a large one, occupying a corner site. It
+was peculiarly English in appearance with its window boxes, its discreet
+curtains, its polished brass and enamelled doorway. It had been the
+town house of Lord Henry Gratham, that eccentric connoisseur of wine and
+follower of witless pleasure. It had been built by him “round a
+bottle of port,” as his friends said, meaning thereby that his first
+consideration had been the cellarage of the house, and that when those
+cellars had been built and provision made for the safe storage of his
+priceless wines, the house had been built without the architect's being
+greatly troubled by his lordship. The double cellars of Gratham House
+had, in their time, been one of the sights of London. When Henry Gratham
+lay under eight feet of Congo earth (he was killed by an elephant
+whilst on a hunting trip) his executors had been singularly fortunate
+in finding an immediate purchaser. Rumour had it that Kara, who was
+no lover of wine, had bricked up the cellars, and their very existence
+passed into domestic legendary.
+
+The door was opened by a well-dressed and deferential man-servant and
+T. X. was ushered into the hall. A fire burnt cheerily in a bronze grate
+and T. X. had a glimpse of a big oil painting of Kara above the marble
+mantle-piece.
+
+“Mr. Kara is very busy, sir,” said the man.
+
+“Just take in my card,” said T. X. “I think he may care to see me.”
+
+The man bowed, produced from some mysterious corner a silver salver
+and glided upstairs in that manner which well-trained servants have,
+a manner which seems to call for no bodily effort. In a minute he
+returned.
+
+“Will you come this way, sir,” he said, and led the way up a broad
+flight of stairs.
+
+At the head of the stairs was a corridor which ran to the left and to
+the right. From this there gave four rooms. One at the extreme end of
+the passage on the right, one on the left, and two at fairly regular
+intervals in the centre.
+
+When the man's hand was on one of the doors, T. X. asked quietly, “I
+think I have seen you before somewhere, my friend.”
+
+The man smiled.
+
+“It is very possible, sir. I was a waiter at the Constitutional for some
+time.”
+
+T. X. nodded.
+
+“That is where it must have been,” he said.
+
+The man opened the door and announced the visitor.
+
+T. X. found himself in a large room, very handsomely furnished, but just
+lacking that sense of cosiness and comfort which is the feature of the
+Englishman's home.
+
+Kara rose from behind a big writing table, and came with a smile and a
+quick step to greet the visitor.
+
+“This is a most unexpected pleasure,” he said, and shook hands warmly.
+
+T. X. had not seen him for a year and found very little change in this
+strange young man. He could not be more confident than he had been, nor
+bear himself with a more graceful carriage. Whatever social success he
+had achieved, it had not spoiled him, for his manner was as genial and
+easy as ever.
+
+“I think that will do, Miss Holland,” he said, turning to the girl who,
+with notebook in hand, stood by the desk.
+
+“Evidently,” thought T. X., “our Hellenic friend has a pretty taste in
+secretaries.”
+
+In that one glance he took her all in--from the bronze-brown of her hair
+to her neat foot.
+
+T. X. was not readily attracted by members of the opposite sex. He was
+self-confessed a predestined bachelor, finding life and its incidence
+too absorbing to give his whole mind to the serious problem of marriage,
+or to contract responsibilities and interests which might divert his
+attention from what he believed was the greater game. Yet he must be a
+man of stone to resist the freshness, the beauty and the youth of this
+straight, slender girl; the pink-and-whiteness of her, the aliveness
+and buoyancy and the thrilling sense of vitality she carried in her very
+presence.
+
+“What is the weirdest name you have ever heard?” asked Kara laughingly.
+“I ask you, because Miss Holland and I have been discussing a begging
+letter addressed to us by a Maggie Goomer.”
+
+The girl smiled slightly and in that smile was paradise, thought T. X.
+
+“The weirdest name?” he repeated, “why I think the worst I have heard
+for a long time is Belinda Mary.”
+
+“That has a familiar ring,” said Kara.
+
+T. X. was looking at the girl.
+
+She was staring at him with a certain languid insolence which made him
+curl up inside. Then with a glance at her employer she swept from the
+room.
+
+“I ought to have introduced you,” said Kara. “That was my secretary,
+Miss Holland. Rather a pretty girl, isn't she?”
+
+“Very,” said T. X., recovering his breath.
+
+“I like pretty things around me,” said Kara, and somehow the complacency
+of the remark annoyed the detective more than anything that Kara had
+ever said to him.
+
+The Greek went to the mantlepiece, and taking down a silver cigarette
+box, opened and offered it to his visitor. Kara was wearing a grey
+lounge suit; and although grey is a very trying colour for a foreigner
+to wear, this suit fitted his splendid figure and gave him just that
+bulk which he needed.
+
+“You are a most suspicious man, Mr. Meredith,” he smiled.
+
+“Suspicious! I?” asked the innocent T. X.
+
+Kara nodded.
+
+“I am sure you want to enquire into the character of all my present
+staff. I am perfectly satisfied that you will never be at rest until you
+learn the antecedents of my cook, my valet, my secretary--”
+
+T. X. held up his hand with a laugh.
+
+“Spare me,” he said. “It is one of my failings, I admit, but I have
+never gone much farther into your domestic affairs than to pry into the
+antecedents of your very interesting chauffeur.”
+
+A little cloud passed over Kara's face, but it was only momentary.
+
+“Oh, Brown,” he said, airily, with just a perceptible pause between the
+two words.
+
+“It used to be Smith,” said T. X., “but no matter. His name is really
+Poropulos.”
+
+“Oh, Poropulos,” said Kara gravely, “I dismissed him a long time ago.”
+
+“Pensioned hire, too, I understand,” said T. X.
+
+The other looked at him awhile, then, “I am very good to my old
+servants,” he said slowly and, changing the subject; “to what good
+fortune do I owe this visit?”
+
+T. X. selected a cigarette before he replied.
+
+“I thought you might be of some service to me,” he said, apparently
+giving his whole attention to the cigarette.
+
+“Nothing would give me greater pleasure,” said Kara, a little eagerly.
+“I am afraid you have not been very keen on continuing what I hoped
+would have ripened into a valuable friendship, more valuable to me
+perhaps,” he smiled, “than to you.”
+
+“I am a very shy man,” said the shameless T. X., “difficult to a fault,
+and rather apt to underrate my social attractions. I have come to you
+now because you know everybody--by the way, how long have you had your
+secretary!” he asked abruptly.
+
+Kara looked up at the ceiling for inspiration.
+
+“Four, no three months,” he corrected, “a very efficient young lady
+who came to me from one of the training establishments. Somewhat
+uncommunicative, better educated than most girls in her position--for
+example, she speaks and writes modern Greek fairly well.”
+
+“A treasure!” suggested T. X.
+
+“Unusually so,” said Kara. “She lives in Marylebone Road, 86a is the
+address. She has no friends, spends most of her evenings in her room,
+is eminently respectable and a little chilling in her attitude to her
+employer.”
+
+T. X. shot a swift glance at the other.
+
+“Why do you tell me all this?” he asked.
+
+“To save you the trouble of finding out,” replied the other coolly.
+“That insatiable curiosity which is one of the equipments of your
+profession, would, I feel sure, induce you to conduct investigations for
+your own satisfaction.”
+
+T. X. laughed.
+
+“May I sit down?” he said.
+
+The other wheeled an armchair across the room and T. X. sank into it.
+He leant back and crossed his legs, and was, in a second, the
+personification of ease.
+
+“I think you are a very clever man, Monsieur Kara,” he said.
+
+The other looked down at him this time without amusement.
+
+“Not so clever that I can discover the object of your visit,” he said
+pleasantly enough.
+
+“It is very simply explained,” said T. X. “You know everybody in town.
+You know, amongst other people, Lady Bartholomew.”
+
+“I know the lady very well indeed,” said Kara, readily,--too readily
+in fact, for the rapidity with which answer had followed question,
+suggested to T. X. that Kara had anticipated the reason for the call.
+
+“Have you any idea,” asked T. X., speaking with deliberation, “as to why
+Lady Bartholomew has gone out of town at this particular moment?”
+
+Kara laughed.
+
+“What an extraordinary question to ask me--as though Lady Bartholomew
+confided her plans to one who is little more than a chance
+acquaintance!”
+
+“And yet,” said T. X., contemplating the burning end of his cigarette,
+“you know her well enough to hold her promissory note.”
+
+“Promissory note?” asked the other.
+
+His tone was one of involuntary surprise and T. X. swore softly to
+himself for now he saw the faintest shade of relief in Kara's face. The
+Commissioner realized that he had committed an error--he had been far
+too definite.
+
+“When I say promissory note,” he went on easily, as though he had
+noticed nothing, “I mean, of course, the securities which the debtor
+invariably gives to one from whom he or she has borrowed large sums of
+money.”
+
+Kara made no answer, but opening a drawer of his desk he took out a key
+and brought it across to where T. X. was sitting.
+
+“Here is the key of my safe,” he said quietly. “You are at liberty to go
+carefully through its contents and discover for yourself any promissory
+note which I hold from Lady Bartholomew. My dear fellow, you don't
+imagine I'm a moneylender, do you?” he said in an injured tone.
+
+“Nothing was further from my thoughts,” said T. X., untruthfully.
+
+But the other pressed the key upon him.
+
+“I should be awfully glad if you would look for yourself,” he said
+earnestly. “I feel that in some way you associate Lady Bartholomew's
+illness with some horrible act of usury on my part--will you satisfy
+yourself and in doing so satisfy me?”
+
+Now any ordinary man, and possibly any ordinary detective, would have
+made the conventional answer. He would have protested that he had no
+intention of doing anything of the sort; he would have uttered, if
+he were a man in the position which T. X. occupied, the conventional
+statement that he had no authority to search the private papers, and
+that he would certainly not avail himself of the other's kindness.
+But T. X. was not an ordinary person. He took the key and balanced it
+lightly in the palm of his hand.
+
+“Is this the key of the famous bedroom safe?” he said banteringly.
+
+Kara was looking down at him with a quizzical smile. “It isn't the safe
+you opened in my absence, on one memorable occasion, Mr. Meredith,” he
+said. “As you probably know, I have changed that safe, but perhaps you
+don't feel equal to the task?”
+
+“On the contrary,” said T. X., calmly, and rising from the chair, “I am
+going to put your good faith to the test.”
+
+For answer Kara walked to the door and opened it.
+
+“Let me show you the way,” he said politely.
+
+He passed along the corridor and entered the apartment at the end. The
+room was a large one and lighted by one big square window which was
+protected by steel bars. In the grate which was broad and high a huge
+fire was burning and the temperature of the room was unpleasantly close
+despite the coldness of the day.
+
+“That is one of the eccentricities which you, as an Englishman, will
+never excuse in me,” said Kara.
+
+Near the foot of the bed, let into, and flush with, the wall, was a big
+green door of the safe.
+
+“Here you are, Mr. Meredith,” said Kara. “All the precious secrets of
+Remington Kara are yours for the seeking.”
+
+“I am afraid I've had my trouble for nothing,” said T. X., making no
+attempt to use the key.
+
+“That is an opinion which I share,” said Kara, with a smile.
+
+“Curiously enough,” said T. X. “I mean just what you mean.”
+
+He handed the key to Kara.
+
+“Won't you open it?” asked the Greek.
+
+T. X. shook his head.
+
+“The safe as far as I can see is a Magnus, the key which you have been
+kind enough to give me is legibly inscribed upon the handle 'Chubb.' My
+experience as a police officer has taught me that Chubb keys very rarely
+open Magnus safes.”
+
+Kara uttered an exclamation of annoyance.
+
+“How stupid of me!” he said, “yet now I remember, I sent the key to my
+bankers, before I went out of town--I only came back this morning, you
+know. I will send for it at once.”
+
+“Pray don't trouble,” murmured T. X. politely. He took from his pocket
+a little flat leather case and opened it. It contained a number of steel
+implements of curious shape which were held in position by a leather
+loop along the centre of the case. From one of these loops he extracted
+a handle, and deftly fitted something that looked like a steel awl
+to the socket in the handle. Looking in wonder, and with no little
+apprehension, Kara saw that the awl was bent at the head.
+
+“What are you going to do?” he asked, a little alarmed.
+
+“I'll show you,” said T. X. pleasantly.
+
+Very gingerly he inserted the instrument in the small keyhole and turned
+it cautiously first one way and then the other. There was a sharp click
+followed by another. He turned the handle and the door of the safe swung
+open.
+
+“Simple, isn't it!” he asked politely.
+
+In that second of time Kara's face had undergone a transformation. The
+eyes which met T. X. Meredith's blazed with an almost insane fury. With
+a quick stride Kara placed himself before the open safe.
+
+“I think this has gone far enough, Mr. Meredith,” he said harshly. “If
+you wish to search my safe you must get a warrant.”
+
+T. X. shrugged his shoulders, and carefully unscrewing the instrument he
+had employed and replacing it in the case, he returned it to his inside
+pocket.
+
+“It was at your invitation, my dear Monsieur Kara,” he said suavely. “Of
+course I knew that you were putting a bluff up on me with the key and
+that you had no more intention of letting me see the inside of your safe
+than you had of telling me exactly what happened to John Lexman.”
+
+The shot went home.
+
+The face which was thrust into the Commissioner's was ridged and veined
+with passion. The lips were turned back to show the big white even
+teeth, the eyes were narrowed to slits, the jaw thrust out, and almost
+every semblance of humanity had vanished from his face.
+
+“You--you--” he hissed, and his clawing hands moved suspiciously
+backward.
+
+“Put up your hands,” said T. X. sharply, “and be damned quick about it!”
+
+In a flash the hands went up, for the revolver which T. X. held was
+pressed uncomfortably against the third button of the Greek's waistcoat.
+
+“That's not the first time you've been asked to put up your hands, I
+think,” said T. X. pleasantly.
+
+His own left hand slipped round to Kara's hip pocket. He found something
+in the shape of a cylinder and drew it out from the pocket. To his
+surprise it was not a revolver, not even a knife; it looked like a small
+electric torch, though instead of a bulb and a bull's-eye glass, there
+was a pepper-box perforation at one end.
+
+He handled it carefully and was about to press the small nickel knob
+when a strangled cry of horror broke from Kara.
+
+“For God's sake be careful!” he gasped. “You're pointing it at me! Do
+not press that lever, I beg!”
+
+“Will it explode!” asked T. X. curiously.
+
+“No, no!”
+
+T. X. pointed the thing downward to the carpet and pressed the knob
+cautiously. As he did so there was a sharp hiss and the floor was
+stained with the liquid which the instrument contained. Just one gush
+of fluid and no more. T. X. looked down. The bright carpet had already
+changed colour, and was smoking. The room was filled with a pungent and
+disagreeable scent. T. X. looked from the floor to the white-faced man.
+
+“Vitriol, I believe,” he said, shaking his head admiringly. “What a dear
+little fellow you are!”
+
+The man, big as he was, was on the point of collapse and mumbled
+something about self-defence, and listened without a word, whilst T.
+X., labouring under an emotion which was perfectly pardonable, described
+Kara, his ancestors and the possibilities of his future estate.
+
+Very slowly the Greek recovered his self-possession.
+
+“I didn't intend using it on you, I swear I didn't,” he pleaded.
+“I'm surrounded by enemies, Meredith. I had to carry some means of
+protection. It is because my enemies know I carry this that they fight
+shy of me. I'll swear I had no intention of using it on you. The idea is
+too preposterous. I am sorry I fooled you about the safe.”
+
+“Don't let that worry you,” said T. X. “I am afraid I did all the
+fooling. No, I cannot let you have this back again,” he said, as the
+Greek put out his hand to take the infernal little instrument. “I must
+take this back to Scotland Yard; it's quite a long time since we had
+anything new in this shape. Compressed air, I presume.”
+
+Kara nodded solemnly.
+
+“Very ingenious indeed,” said T. X. “If I had a brain like yours,” he
+paused, “I should do something with it--with a gun,” he added, as he
+passed out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+     “My dear Mr. Meredith,
+
+     “I cannot tell you how unhappy and humiliated I feel that my
+     little joke with you should have had such an uncomfortable
+     ending.  As you know, and as I have given you proof, I have
+     the greatest admiration in the world for one whose work for
+     humanity has won such universal recognition.
+
+     “I hope that we shall both forget this unhappy morning and
+     that you will give me an opportunity of rendering to you in
+     person, the apologies which are due to you.  I feel that
+     anything less will neither rehabilitate me in your esteem,
+     nor secure for me the remnants of my shattered self-respect.
+
+     “I am hoping you will dine with me next week and meet a most
+     interesting man, George Gathercole, who has just returned
+     from Patagonia,--I only received his letter this morning--
+     having made most remarkable discoveries concerning that
+     country.
+
+     “I feel sure that you are large enough minded and too much a
+     man of the world to allow my foolish fit of temper to
+     disturb a relationship which I have always hoped would be
+     mutually pleasant.  If you will allow Gathercole, who will
+     be unconscious of the part he is playing, to act as
+     peacemaker between yourself and myself, I shall feel that
+     his trip, which has cost me a large sum of money, will not
+     have been wasted.
+
+     “I am, dear Mr. Meredith,
+
+     “Yours very sincerely,
+
+     “REMINGTON KARA.”
+
+Kara folded the letter and inserted it in its envelope. He rang a bell
+on his table and the girl who had so filled T. X. with a sense of awe
+came from an adjoining room.
+
+“You will see that this is delivered, Miss Holland.”
+
+She inclined her head and stood waiting. Kara rose from his desk and
+began to pace the room.
+
+“Do you know T. X. Meredith?” he asked suddenly.
+
+“I have heard of him,” said the girl.
+
+“A man with a singular mind,” said Kara; “a man against whom my
+favourite weapon would fail.”
+
+She looked at him with interest in her eyes.
+
+“What is your favourite weapon, Mr. Kara?” she asked.
+
+“Fear,” he said.
+
+If he expected her to give him any encouragement to proceed he was
+disappointed. Probably he required no such encouragement, for in the
+presence of his social inferiors he was somewhat monopolizing.
+
+“Cut a man's flesh and it heals,” he said. “Whip a man and the memory
+of it passes, frighten him, fill him with a sense of foreboding and
+apprehension and let him believe that something dreadful is going to
+happen either to himself or to someone he loves--better the latter--and
+you will hurt him beyond forgetfulness. Fear is a tyrant and a despot,
+more terrible than the rack, more potent than the stake. Fear
+is many-eyed and sees horrors where normal vision only sees the
+ridiculous.”
+
+“Is that your creed?” she asked quietly.
+
+“Part of it, Miss Holland,” he smiled.
+
+She played idly with the letter she held in her hand, balancing it on
+the edge of the desk, her eyes downcast.
+
+“What would justify the use of such an awful weapon?” she asked.
+
+“It is amply justified to secure an end,” he said blandly. “For
+example--I want something--I cannot obtain that something through the
+ordinary channel or by the employment of ordinary means. It is essential
+to me, to my happiness, to my comfort, or my amour-propre, that that
+something shall be possessed by me. If I can buy it, well and good. If
+I can buy those who can use their influence to secure this thing for me,
+so much the better. If I can obtain it by any merit I possess, I utilize
+that merit, providing always, that I can secure my object in the time,
+otherwise--”
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“I see,” she said, nodding her head quickly. “I suppose that is how
+blackmailers feel.”
+
+He frowned.
+
+“That is a word I never use, nor do I like to hear it employed,” he
+said. “Blackmail suggests to me a vulgar attempt to obtain money.”
+
+“Which is generally very badly wanted by the people who use it,” said
+the girl, with a little smile, “and, according to your argument, they
+are also justified.”
+
+“It is a matter of plane,” he said airily. “Viewed from my standpoint,
+they are sordid criminals--the sort of person that T. X. meets, I
+presume, in the course of his daily work. T. X.,” he went on somewhat
+oracularly, “is a man for whom I have a great deal of respect. You will
+probably meet him again, for he will find an opportunity of asking you a
+few questions about myself. I need hardly tell you--”
+
+He lifted his shoulders with a deprecating smile.
+
+“I shall certainly not discuss your business with any person,” said the
+girl coldly.
+
+“I am paying you 3 pounds a week, I think,” he said. “I intend
+increasing that to 5 pounds because you suit me most admirably.”
+
+“Thank you,” said the girl quietly, “but I am already being paid quite
+sufficient.”
+
+She left him, a little astonished and not a little ruffled.
+
+To refuse the favours of Remington Kara was, by him, regarded
+as something of an affront. Half his quarrel with T. X. was that
+gentleman's curious indifference to the benevolent attitude which Kara
+had persistently adopted in his dealings with the detective.
+
+He rang the bell, this time for his valet.
+
+“Fisher,” he said, “I am expecting a visit from a gentleman named
+Gathercole--a one-armed gentleman whom you must look after if he comes.
+Detain him on some pretext or other because he is rather difficult to
+get hold of and I want to see him. I am going out now and I shall be
+back at 6.30. Do whatever you can to prevent him going away until
+I return. He will probably be interested if you take him into the
+library.”
+
+“Very good, sir,” said the urbane Fisher, “will you change before you go
+out?”
+
+Kara shook his head.
+
+“I think I will go as I am,” he said. “Get me my fur coat. This beastly
+cold kills me,” he shivered as he glanced into the bleak street. “Keep
+my fire going, put all my private letters in my bedroom, and see that
+Miss Holland has her lunch.”
+
+Fisher followed him to his car, wrapped the fur rug about his legs,
+closed the door carefully and returned to the house. From thence onward
+his behaviour was somewhat extraordinary for a well-bred servant. That
+he should return to Kara's study and set the papers in order was natural
+and proper.
+
+That he should conduct a rapid examination of all the drawers in Kara's
+desk might be excused on the score of diligence, since he was, to some
+extent, in the confidence of his employer.
+
+Kara was given to making friends of his servants--up to a point. In his
+more generous moments he would address his bodyguard as “Fred,” and
+on more occasions than one, and for no apparent reason, had tipped his
+servant over and above his salary.
+
+Mr. Fred Fisher found little to reward him for his search until he came
+upon Kara's cheque book which told him that on the previous day the
+Greek had drawn 6,000 pounds in cash from the bank. This interested him
+mightily and he replaced the cheque book with the tightened lips and
+the fixed gaze of a man who was thinking rapidly. He paid a visit to
+the library, where the secretary was engaged in making copies of Kara's
+correspondence, answering letters appealing for charitable donations,
+and in the hack words which fall to the secretaries of the great.
+
+He replenished the fire, asked deferentially for any instructions and
+returned again to his quest. This time he made the bedroom the scene of
+his investigations. The safe he did not attempt to touch, but there
+was a small bureau in which Kara would have placed his private
+correspondence of the morning. This however yielded no result.
+
+By the side of the bed on a small table was a telephone, the sight of
+which apparently afforded the servant a little amusement. This was
+the private 'phone which Kara had been instrumental in having fixed to
+Scotland Yard--as he had explained to his servants.
+
+“Rum cove,” said Fisher.
+
+He paused for a moment before the closed door of the room and smilingly
+surveyed the great steel latch which spanned the door and fitted into
+an iron socket securely screwed to the framework. He lifted it
+gingerly--there was a little knob for the purpose--and let it fall
+gently into the socket which had been made to receive it on the door
+itself.
+
+“Rum cove,” he said again, and lifting the latch to the hook which held
+it up, left the room, closing the door softly behind him. He walked down
+the corridor, with a meditative frown, and began to descend the stairs
+to the hall.
+
+He was less than half-way down when the one maid of Kara's household
+came up to meet him.
+
+“There's a gentleman who wants to see Mr. Kara,” she said, “here is his
+card.”
+
+Fisher took the card from the salver and read, “Mr. George Gathercole,
+Junior Travellers' Club.”
+
+“I'll see this gentleman,” he said, with a sudden brisk interest.
+
+He found the visitor standing in the hall.
+
+He was a man who would have attracted attention, if only from the
+somewhat eccentric nature of his dress and his unkempt appearance. He
+was dressed in a well-worn overcoat of a somewhat pronounced check, he
+had a top-hat, glossy and obviously new, at the back of his head, and
+the lower part of his face was covered by a ragged beard. This he was
+plucking with nervous jerks, talking to himself the while, and casting a
+disparaging eye upon the portrait of Remington Kara which hung above the
+marble fireplace. A pair of pince-nez sat crookedly on his nose and
+two fat volumes under his arm completed the picture. Fisher, who was an
+observer of some discernment, noticed under the overcoat a creased blue
+suit, large black boots and a pair of pearl studs.
+
+The newcomer glared round at the valet.
+
+“Take these!” he ordered peremptorily, pointing to the books under his
+arm.
+
+Fisher hastened to obey and noted with some wonder that the visitor did
+not attempt to assist him either by loosening his hold of the volumes
+or raising his hand. Accidentally the valet's hand pressed against the
+other's sleeve and he received a shock, for the forearm was clearly an
+artificial one. It was against a wooden surface beneath the sleeve
+that his knuckles struck, and this view of the stranger's infirmity was
+confirmed when the other reached round with his right hand, took hold of
+the gloved left hand and thrust it into the pocket of his overcoat.
+
+“Where is Kara?” growled the stranger.
+
+“He will be back very shortly, sir,” said the urbane Fisher.
+
+“Out, is he?” boomed the visitor. “Then I shan't wait. What the devil
+does he mean by being out? He's had three years to be out!”
+
+“Mr. Kara expects you, sir. He told me he would be in at six o'clock at
+the latest.”
+
+“Six o'clock, ye gods'.” stormed the man impatiently. “What dog am I
+that I should wait till six?”
+
+He gave a savage little tug at his beard.
+
+“Six o'clock, eh? You will tell Mr. Kara that I called. Give me those
+books.”
+
+“But I assure you, sir,--” stammered Fisher.
+
+“Give me those books!” roared the other.
+
+Deftly he lifted his left hand from the pocket, crooked the elbow by
+some quick manipulation, and thrust the books, which the valet most
+reluctantly handed to him, back to the place from whence he had taken
+them.
+
+“Tell Mr. Kara I will call at my own time--do you understand, at my own
+time. Good morning to you.”
+
+“If you would only wait, sir,” pleaded the agonized Fisher.
+
+“Wait be hanged,” snarled the other. “I've waited three years, I tell
+you. Tell Mr. Kara to expect me when he sees me!”
+
+He went out and most unnecessarily banged the door behind him. Fisher
+went back to the library. The girl was sealing up some letters as he
+entered and looked up.
+
+“I am afraid, Miss Holland, I've got myself into very serious trouble.”
+
+“What is that, Fisher!” asked the girl.
+
+“There was a gentleman coming to see Mr. Kara, whom Mr. Kara
+particularly wanted to see.”
+
+“Mr. Gathercole,” said the girl quickly.
+
+Fisher nodded.
+
+“Yes, miss, I couldn't get him to stay though.”
+
+She pursed her lips thoughtfully.
+
+“Mr. Kara will be very cross, but I don't see how you can help it. I
+wish you had called me.”
+
+“He never gave a chance, miss,” said Fisher, with a little smile, “but
+if he comes again I'll show him straight up to you.”
+
+She nodded.
+
+“Is there anything you want, miss?” he asked as he stood at the door.
+
+“What time did Mr. Kara say he would be back?”
+
+“At six o'clock, miss,” the man replied.
+
+“There is rather an important letter here which has to be delivered.”
+
+“Shall I ring up for a messenger?”
+
+“No, I don't think that would be advisable. You had better take it
+yourself.”
+
+Kara was in the habit of employing Fisher as a confidential messenger
+when the occasion demanded such employment.
+
+“I will go with pleasure, miss,” he said.
+
+It was a heaven-sent opportunity for Fisher, who had been inventing
+some excuse for leaving the house. She handed him the letter and he read
+without a droop of eyelid the superscription:
+
+“T. X. Meredith, Esq., Special Service Dept., Scotland Yard, Whitehall.”
+
+He put it carefully in his pocket and went from the room to change.
+Large as the house was Kara did not employ a regular staff of servants.
+A maid and a valet comprised the whole of the indoor staff. His cook,
+and the other domestics, necessary for conducting an establishment of
+that size, were engaged by the day.
+
+Kara had returned from the country earlier than had been anticipated,
+and, save for Fisher, the only other person in the house beside the
+girl, was the middle-aged domestic who was parlour-maid, serving-maid
+and housekeeper in one.
+
+Miss Holland sat at her desk to all appearance reading over the
+letters she had typed that afternoon but her mind was very far from the
+correspondence before her. She heard the soft thud of the front door
+closing, and rising she crossed the room rapidly and looked down through
+the window to the street. She watched Fisher until he was out of sight;
+then she descended to the hall and to the kitchen.
+
+It was not the first visit she had made to the big underground room with
+its vaulted roof and its great ranges--which were seldom used nowadays,
+for Kara gave no dinners.
+
+The maid--who was also cook--arose up as the girl entered.
+
+“It's a sight for sore eyes to see you in my kitchen, miss,” she smiled.
+
+“I'm afraid you're rather lonely, Mrs. Beale,” said the girl
+sympathetically.
+
+“Lonely, miss!” cried the maid. “I fairly get the creeps sitting here
+hour after hour. It's that door that gives me the hump.”
+
+She pointed to the far end of the kitchen to a soiled looking door of
+unpainted wood.
+
+“That's Mr. Kara's wine cellar--nobody's been in it but him. I know
+he goes in sometimes because I tried a dodge that my brother--who's a
+policeman--taught me. I stretched a bit of white cotton across it an' it
+was broke the next morning.”
+
+“Mr. Kara keeps some of his private papers in there,” said the girl
+quietly, “he has told me so himself.”
+
+“H'm,” said the woman doubtfully, “I wish he'd brick it up--the same
+as he has the lower cellar--I get the horrors sittin' here at night
+expectin' the door to open an' the ghost of the mad lord to come
+out--him that was killed in Africa.”
+
+Miss Holland laughed.
+
+“I want you to go out now,” she said, “I have no stamps.”
+
+Mrs. Beale obeyed with alacrity and whilst she was assuming a hat--being
+desirous of maintaining her prestige as housekeeper in the eyes of
+Cadogan Square, the girl ascended to the upper floor.
+
+Again she watched from the window the disappearing figure.
+
+Once out of sight Miss Holland went to work with a remarkable
+deliberation and thoroughness. From her bag she produced a small purse
+and opened it. In that case was a new steel key. She passed swiftly down
+the corridor to Kara's room and made straight for the safe.
+
+In two seconds it was open and she was examining its contents. It was
+a large safe of the usual type. There were four steel drawers fitted at
+the back and at the bottom of the strong box. Two of these were unlocked
+and contained nothing more interesting than accounts relating to Kara's
+estate in Albania.
+
+The top pair were locked. She was prepared for this contingency and a
+second key was as efficacious as the first. An examination of the first
+drawer did not produce all that she had expected. She returned the
+papers to the drawer, pushed it to and locked it. She gave her attention
+to the second drawer. Her hand shook a little as she pulled it open. It
+was her last chance, her last hope.
+
+There were a number of small jewel-boxes almost filling the drawer. She
+took them out one by one and at the bottom she found what she had been
+searching for and that which had filled her thoughts for the past three
+months.
+
+It was a square case covered in red morocco leather. She inserted her
+shaking hand and took it out with a triumphant little cry.
+
+“At last,” she said aloud, and then a hand grasped her wrist and in a
+panic she turned to meet the smiling face of Kara.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+She felt her knees shake under her and thought she was going to swoon.
+She put out her disengaged hand to steady herself, and if the face which
+was turned to him was pale, there was a steadfast resolution in her dark
+eyes.
+
+“Let me relieve you of that, Miss Holland,” said Kara, in his silkiest
+tones.
+
+He wrenched rather than took the box from her hand, replaced it
+carefully in the drawer, pushed the drawer to and locked it, examining
+the key as he withdrew it. Then he closed the safe and locked that.
+
+“Obviously,” he said presently, “I must get a new safe.”
+
+He had not released his hold of her wrist nor did he, until he had
+led her from the room back to the library. Then he released the girl,
+standing between her and the door, with folded arms and that cynical,
+quiet, contemptuous smile of his upon his handsome face.
+
+“There are many courses which I can adopt,” he said slowly. “I can
+send for the police--when my servants whom you have despatched so
+thoughtfully have returned, or I can take your punishment into my own
+hands.”
+
+“So far as I am concerned,” said the girl coolly, “you may send for the
+police.”
+
+She leant back against the edge of the desk, her hands holding the edge,
+and faced him without so much as a quaver.
+
+“I do not like the police,” mused Kara, when there came a knock at the
+door.
+
+Kara turned and opened it and after a low strained conversation he
+returned, closing the door and laid a paper of stamps on the girl's
+table.
+
+“As I was saying, I do not care for the police, and I prefer my own
+method. In this particular instance the police obviously would not serve
+me, because you are not afraid of them and in all probability you are
+in their pay--am I right in supposing that you are one of Mr. T. X.
+Meredith's accomplices!”
+
+“I do not know Mr. T. X. Meredith,” she replied calmly, “and I am not in
+any way associated with the police.”
+
+“Nevertheless,” he persisted, “you do not seem to be very scared of them
+and that removes any temptation I might have to place you in the hands
+of the law. Let me see,” he pursed his lips as he applied his mind to
+the problem.
+
+She half sat, half stood, watching him without any evidence of
+apprehension, but with a heart which began to quake a little. For three
+months she had played her part and the strain had been greater than
+she had confessed to herself. Now the great moment had come and she had
+failed. That was the sickening, maddening thing about it all. It was
+not the fear of arrest or of conviction, which brought a sinking to
+her heart; it was the despair of failure, added to a sense of her
+helplessness against this man.
+
+“If I had you arrested your name would appear in all the papers, of
+course,” he said, narrowly, “and your photograph would probably adorn
+the Sunday journals,” he added expectantly.
+
+She laughed.
+
+“That doesn't appeal to me,” she said.
+
+“I am afraid it doesn't,” he replied, and strolled towards her as though
+to pass her on his way to the window. He was abreast of her when he
+suddenly swung round and catching her in his arms he caught her close
+to him. Before she could realise what he planned, he had stooped swiftly
+and kissed her full upon the mouth.
+
+“If you scream, I shall kiss you again,” he said, “for I have sent the
+maid to buy some more stamps--to the General Post Office.”
+
+“Let me go,” she gasped.
+
+Now for the first time he saw the terror in her eyes, and there surged
+within him that mad sense of triumph, that intoxication of power which
+had been associated with the red letter days of his warped life.
+
+“You're afraid!” he bantered her, half whispering the words, “you're
+afraid now, aren't you? If you scream I shall kiss you again, do you
+hear?”
+
+“For God's sake, let me go,” she whispered.
+
+He felt her shaking in his arms, and suddenly he released her with a
+little laugh, and she sank trembling from head to foot upon the chair by
+her desk.
+
+“Now you're going to tell me who sent you here,” he went on harshly,
+“and why you came. I never suspected you. I thought you were one of
+those strange creatures one meets in England, a gentlewoman who prefers
+working for her living to the more simple business of getting married.
+And all the time you were spying--clever--very clever!”
+
+The girl was thinking rapidly. In five minutes Fisher would return.
+Somehow she had faith in Fisher's ability and willingness to save her
+from a situation which she realized was fraught with the greatest danger
+to herself. She was horribly afraid. She knew this man far better than
+he suspected, realized the treachery and the unscrupulousness of him.
+She knew he would stop short of nothing, that he was without honour and
+without a single attribute of goodness.
+
+He must have read her thoughts for he came nearer and stood over her.
+
+“You needn't shrink, my young friend,” he said with a little chuckle.
+“You are going to do just what I want you to do, and your first act will
+be to accompany me downstairs. Get up.”
+
+He half lifted, half dragged her to her feet and led her from the room.
+They descended to the hall together and the girl spoke no word. Perhaps
+she hoped that she might wrench herself free and make her escape into
+the street, but in this she was disappointed. The grip about her arm was
+a grip of steel and she knew safety did not lie in that direction. She
+pulled back at the head of the stairs that led down to the kitchen.
+
+“Where are you taking me?” she asked.
+
+“I am going to put you into safe custody,” he said. “On the whole I
+think it is best that the police take this matter in hand and I shall
+lock you into my wine cellar and go out in search of a policeman.”
+
+The big wooden door opened, revealing a second door and this Kara
+unbolted. She noticed that both doors were sheeted with steel, the outer
+on the inside, and the inner door on the outside. She had no time to
+make any further observations for Kara thrust her into the darkness. He
+switched on a light.
+
+“I will not deny you that,” he said, pushing her back as she made a
+frantic attempt to escape. He swung the outer door to as she raised her
+voice in a piercing scream, and clapping his hand over her mouth held
+her tightly for a moment.
+
+“I have warned you,” he hissed.
+
+She saw his face distorted with rage. She saw Kara transfigured with
+devilish anger, saw that handsome, almost godlike countenance thrust
+into hers, flushed and seamed with malignity and a hatefulness beyond
+understanding and then her senses left her and she sank limp and
+swooning into his arms.
+
+
+When she recovered consciousness she found herself lying on a plain
+stretcher bed. She sat up suddenly. Kara had gone and the door was
+closed. The cellar was dry and clean and its walls were enamelled white.
+Light was supplied by two electric lamps in the ceiling. There was a
+table and a chair and a small washstand, and air was evidently supplied
+through unseen ventilators. It was indeed a prison and no less, and in
+her first moments of panic she found herself wondering whether Kara had
+used this underground dungeon of his before for a similar purpose.
+
+She examined the room carefully. At the farthermost end was another
+door and this she pushed gently at first and then vigorously without
+producing the slightest impression. She still had her bag, a small
+affair of black moire, which hung from her belt, in which was nothing
+more formidable than a penknife, a small bottle of smelling salts and
+a pair of scissors. The latter she had used for cutting out those
+paragraphs from the daily newspapers which referred to Kara's movements.
+
+They would make a formidable weapon, and wrapping her handkerchief round
+the handle to give it a better grip she placed it on the table within
+reach. She was dimly conscious all the time that she had heard something
+about this wine cellar--something which, if she could recollect it,
+would be of service to her.
+
+Then in a flash she remembered that there was a lower cellar, which
+according to Mrs. Beale was never used and was bricked up. It was
+approached from the outside, down a circular flight of stairs. There
+might be a way out from that direction and would there not be some
+connection between the upper cellar and the lower!
+
+She set to work to make a closer examination of the apartment.
+
+The floor was of concrete, covered with a light rush matting. This she
+carefully rolled up, starting at the door. One half of the floor was
+uncovered without revealing the existence of any trap. She attempted to
+pull the table into the centre of the room, better to roll the matting,
+but found it fixed to the wall, and going down on her knees, she
+discovered that it had been fixed after the matting had been laid.
+
+Obviously there was no need for the fixture and, she tapped the floor
+with her little knuckle. Her heart started racing. The sound her
+knocking gave forth was a hollow one. She sprang up, took her bag from
+the table, opened the little penknife and cut carefully through the thin
+rushes. She might have to replace the matting and it was necessary she
+should do her work tidily.
+
+Soon the whole of the trap was revealed. There was an iron ring, which
+fitted flush with the top and which she pulled. The trap yielded and
+swung back as though there were a counterbalance at the other end, as
+indeed there was. She peered down. There was a dim light below--the
+reflection of a light in the distance. A flight of steps led down to the
+lower level and after a second's hesitation she swung her legs over the
+cavity and began her descent.
+
+She was in a cellar slightly smaller than that above her. The light
+she had seen came from an inner apartment which would be underneath the
+kitchen of the house. She made her way cautiously along, stepping on
+tip-toe. The first of the rooms she came to was well-furnished. There
+was a thick carpet on the floor, comfortable easy-chairs, a little
+bookcase well filled, and a reading lamp. This must be Kara's
+underground study, where he kept his precious papers.
+
+A smaller room gave from this and again it was doorless. She looked in
+and after her eyes had become accustomed to the darkness she saw that it
+was a bathroom handsomely fitted.
+
+The room she was in was also without any light which came from the
+farthermost chamber. As the girl strode softly across the well-carpeted
+room she trod on something hard. She stooped and felt along the
+floor and her fingers encountered a thin steel chain. The girl was
+bewildered-almost panic-stricken. She shrunk back from the entrance
+of the inner room, fearful of what she would see. And then from the
+interior came a sound that made her tingle with horror.
+
+It was a sound of a sigh, long and trembling. She set her teeth and
+strode through the doorway and stood for a moment staring with open eyes
+and mouth at what she saw.
+
+“My God!” she breathed, “London. . . . in the twentieth century. . . !”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Superintendent Mansus had a little office in Scotland Yard proper,
+which, he complained, was not so much a private bureau, as a
+waiting-room to which repaired every official of the police service
+who found time hanging on his hands. On the afternoon of Miss Holland's
+surprising adventure, a plainclothes man of “D” Division brought to
+Mr. Mansus's room a very scared domestic servant, voluble, tearful and
+agonizingly penitent. It was a mood not wholly unfamiliar to a police
+officer of twenty years experience and Mr. Mansus was not impressed.
+
+“If you will kindly shut up,” he said, blending his natural politeness
+with his employment of the vernacular, “and if you will also answer
+a few questions I will save you a lot of trouble. You were Lady
+Bartholomew's maid weren't you?”
+
+“Yes, sir,” sobbed the red-eyed Mary Ann.
+
+“And you have been detected trying to pawn a gold bracelet, the property
+of Lady Bartholomew?”
+
+The maid gulped, nodded and started breathlessly upon a recital of her
+wrongs.
+
+“Yes, sir--but she practically gave it to me, sir, and I haven't had my
+wages for two months, sir, and she can give that foreigner thousands
+and thousands of pounds at a time, sir, but her poor servants she can't
+pay--no, she can't. And if Sir William knew especially about my lady's
+cards and about the snuffbox, what would he think, I wonder, and I'm
+going to have my rights, for if she can pay thousands to a swell like
+Mr. Kara she can pay me and--”
+
+Mansus jerked his head.
+
+“Take her down to the cells,” he said briefly, and they led her away, a
+wailing, woeful figure of amateur larcenist.
+
+In three minutes Mansus was with T. X. and had reduced the girl's
+incoherence to something like order.
+
+“This is important,” said T. X.; “produce the Abigail.”
+
+“The--?” asked the puzzled officer.
+
+“The skivvy--slavey--hired help--get busy,” said T. X. impatiently.
+
+They brought her to T. X. in a condition bordering upon collapse.
+
+“Get her a cup of tea,” said the wise chief. “Sit down, Mary Ann, and
+forget all your troubles.”
+
+“Oh, sir, I've never been in this position before,” she began, as she
+flopped into the chair they put for her.
+
+“Then you've had a very tiring time,” said T. X. “Now listen--”
+
+“I've been respectable--”
+
+“Forget it!” said T. X., wearily. “Listen! If you'll tell me the whole
+truth about Lady Bartholomew and the money she paid to Mr. Kara--”
+
+“Two thousand pounds--two separate thousand and by all accounts-”
+
+“If you will tell me the truth, I'll compound a felony and let you go
+free.”
+
+It was a long time before he could prevail upon her to clear her
+speech of the ego which insisted upon intruding. There were gaps in her
+narrative which he bridged. In the main it was a believable story. Lady
+Bartholomew had lost money and had borrowed from Kara. She had given as
+security, the snuffbox presented to her husband's father, a doctor, by
+one of the Czars for services rendered, and was “all blue enamel and
+gold, and foreign words in diamonds.” On the question of the amount Lady
+Bartholomew had borrowed, Abigail was very vague. All that she knew was
+that my lady had paid back two thousand pounds and that she was still
+very distressed (“in a fit” was the phrase the girl used), because
+apparently Kara refused to restore the box.
+
+There had evidently been terrible scenes in the Bartholomew menage,
+hysterics and what not, the principal breakdown having occurred when
+Belinda Mary came home from school in France.
+
+“Miss Bartholomew is home then. Where is she?” asked T. X.
+
+Here the girl was more vague than ever. She thought the young lady had
+gone back again, anyway Miss Belinda had been very much upset. Miss
+Belinda had seen Dr. Williams and advised that her mother should go away
+for a change.
+
+“Miss Belinda seems to be a precocious young person,” said T. X. “Did
+she by any chance see Mr. Kara?”
+
+“Oh, no,” explained the girl. “Miss Belinda was above that sort of
+person. Miss Belinda was a lady, if ever there was one.”
+
+“And how old is this interesting young woman?” asked T. X. curiously.
+
+“She is nineteen,” said the girl, and the Commissioner, who had pictured
+Belinda in short plaid frocks and long pigtails, and had moreover
+visualised her as a freckled little girl with thin legs and snub nose,
+was abashed.
+
+He delivered a short lecture on the sacred rights of property, paid the
+girl the three months' wages which were due to her--he had no doubt as
+to the legality of her claim--and dismissed her with instructions to go
+back to the house, pack her box and clear out.
+
+After the girl had gone, T. X. sat down to consider the position. He
+might see Kara and since Kara had expressed his contrition and was
+probably in a more humble state of mind, he might make reparation. Then
+again he might not. Mansus was waiting and T. X. walked back with him to
+his little office.
+
+“I hardly know what to make of it,” he said in despair.
+
+“If you can give me Kara's motive, sir, I can give you a solution,” said
+Mansus.
+
+T. X. shook his head.
+
+“That is exactly what I am unable to give you,” he said.
+
+He perched himself on Mansus's desk and lit a cigar.
+
+“I have a good mind to go round and see him,” he said after a while.
+
+“Why not telephone to him?” asked Mansus. “There is his 'phone straight
+into his boudoir.”
+
+He pointed to a small telephone in a corner of the room.
+
+“Oh, he persuaded the Commissioner to run the wire, did he?” said T. X.
+interested, and walked over to the telephone.
+
+He fingered the receiver for a little while and was about to take it
+off, but changed his mind.
+
+“I think not,” he said, “I'll go round and see him to-morrow. I don't
+hope to succeed in extracting the confidence in the case of Lady
+Bartholomew, which he denied me over poor Lexman.”
+
+“I suppose you'll never give up hope of seeing Mr. Lexman again,” smiled
+Mansus, busily arranging a new blotting pad.
+
+Before T. X. could answer there came a knock at the door, and a
+uniformed policeman, entered. He saluted T. X.
+
+“They've just sent an urgent letter across from your office, sir. I said
+I thought you were here.”
+
+He handed the missive to the Commissioner. T. X. took it and glanced at
+the typewritten address. It was marked “urgent” and “by hand.” He
+took up the thin, steel, paper-knife from the desk and slit open the
+envelope. The letter consisted of three or four pages of manuscript and,
+unlike the envelope, it was handwritten.
+
+“My dear T. X.,” it began, and the handwriting was familiar.
+
+Mansus, watching the Commissioner, saw the puzzled frown gather on
+his superior's forehead, saw the eyebrows arch and the mouth open
+in astonishment, saw him hastily turn to the last page to read the
+signature and then:
+
+“Howling apples!” gasped T. X. “It's from John Lexman!”
+
+His hand shook as he turned the closely written pages. The letter was
+dated that afternoon. There was no other address than “London.”
+
+“My dear T. X.,” it began, “I do not doubt that this letter will give
+you a little shock, because most of my friends will have believed that I
+am gone beyond return. Fortunately or unfortunately that is not so. For
+myself I could wish--but I am not going to take a very gloomy view since
+I am genuinely pleased at the thought that I shall be meeting you again.
+Forgive this letter if it is incoherent but I have only this moment
+returned and am writing at the Charing Cross Hotel. I am not staying
+here, but I will let you have my address later. The crossing has been
+a very severe one so you must forgive me if my letter sounds a little
+disjointed. You will be sorry to hear that my dear wife is dead. She
+died abroad about six months ago. I do not wish to talk very much about
+it so you will forgive me if I do not tell you any more.
+
+“My principal object in writing to you at the moment is an official
+one. I suppose I am still amenable to punishment and I have decided to
+surrender myself to the authorities to-night. You used to have a most
+excellent assistant in Superintendent Mansus, and if it is convenient to
+you, as I hope it will be, I will report myself to him at 10.15. At any
+rate, my dear T. X., I do not wish to mix you up in my affairs and if
+you will let me do this business through Mansus I shall be very much
+obliged to you.
+
+“I know there is no great punishment awaiting me, because my pardon was
+apparently signed on the night before my escape. I shall not have much
+to tell you, because there is not much in the past two years that I
+would care to recall. We endured a great deal of unhappiness and death
+was very merciful when it took my beloved from me.
+
+“Do you ever see Kara in these days?
+
+“Will you tell Mansus to expect me at between ten and half-past, and if
+he will give instructions to the officer on duty in the hall I will come
+straight up to his room.
+
+“With affectionate regards, my dear fellow, I am,
+
+“Yours sincerely,
+
+“JOHN LEXMAN.”
+
+
+T. X. read the letter over twice and his eyes were troubled.
+
+“Poor girl,” he said softly, and handed the letter to Mansus. “He
+evidently wants to see you because he is afraid of using my friendship
+to his advantage. I shall be here, nevertheless.”
+
+“What will be the formality?” asked Mansus.
+
+“There will be no formality,” said the other briskly. “I will secure the
+necessary pardon from the Home Secretary and in point of fact I have it
+already promised, in writing.”
+
+He walked back to Whitehall, his mind fully occupied with the momentous
+events of the day. It was a raw February evening, sleet was falling
+in the street, a piercing easterly wind drove even through his thick
+overcoat. In such doorways as offered protection from the bitter
+elements the wreckage of humanity which clings to the West end of
+London, as the singed moth flutters about the flame that destroys it,
+were huddled for warmth.
+
+T. X. was a man of vast human sympathies.
+
+All his experience with the criminal world, all his disappointments,
+all his disillusions had failed to quench the pity for his unfortunate
+fellows. He made it a rule on such nights as these, that if, by chance,
+returning late to his office he should find such a shivering piece of
+jetsam sheltering in his own doorway, he would give him or her the price
+of a bed.
+
+In his own quaint way he derived a certain speculative excitement from
+this practice. If the doorway was empty he regarded himself as a winner,
+if some one stood sheltered in the deep recess which is a feature of the
+old Georgian houses in this historic thoroughfare, he would lose to the
+extent of a shilling.
+
+He peered forward through the semi-darkness as he neared the door of his
+offices.
+
+“I've lost,” he said, and stripped his gloves preparatory to groping in
+his pocket for a coin.
+
+Somebody was standing in the entrance, but it was obviously a very
+respectable somebody. A dumpy, motherly somebody in a seal-skin coat and
+a preposterous bonnet.
+
+“Hullo,” said T. X. in surprise, “are you trying to get in here?”
+
+“I want to see Mr. Meredith,” said the visitor, in the mincing affected
+tones of one who excused the vulgar source of her prosperity by
+frequently reiterated claims to having seen better days.
+
+“Your longing shall be gratified,” said T. X. gravely.
+
+He unlocked the heavy door, passed through the uncarpeted passage--there
+are no frills on Government offices--and led the way up the stairs to
+the suite on the first floor which constituted his bureau.
+
+He switched on all the lights and surveyed his visitor, a comfortable
+person of the landlady type.
+
+“A good sort,” thought T. X., “but somewhat overweighted with lorgnettes
+and seal-skin.”
+
+“You will pardon my coming to see you at this hour of the night,” she
+began deprecatingly, “but as my dear father used to say, 'Hopi soit qui
+mal y pense.'”
+
+“Your dear father being in the garter business?” suggested T. X.
+humorously. “Won't you sit down, Mrs. ----”
+
+“Mrs. Cassley,” beamed the lady as she seated herself. “He was in the
+paper hanging business. But needs must, when the devil drives, as the
+saying goes.”
+
+“What particular devil is driving you, Mrs. Cassley?” asked T. X.,
+somewhat at a loss to understand the object of this visit.
+
+“I may be doing wrong,” began the lady, pursing her lips, “and two
+blacks will never make a white.”
+
+“And all that glitters is not gold,” suggested T. X. a little wearily.
+“Will you please tell me your business, Mrs. Cassley? I am a very hungry
+man.”
+
+“Well, it's like this, sir,” said Mrs. Cassley, dropping her erudition,
+and coming down to bedrock homeliness; “I've got a young lady stopping
+with me, as respectable a gel as I've had to deal with. And I know
+what respectability is, I might tell you, for I've taken professional
+boarders and I have been housekeeper to a doctor.”
+
+“You are well qualified to speak,” said T. X. with a smile. “And what
+about this particular young lady of yours! By the way what is your
+address?”
+
+“86a Marylebone Road,” said the lady.
+
+T. X. sat up.
+
+“Yes?” he said quickly. “What about your young lady?”
+
+“She works as far as I can understand,” said the loquacious landlady,
+“with a certain Mr. Kara in the typewriting line. She came to me four
+months ago.”
+
+“Never mind when she came to you,” said T. X. impatiently. “Have you a
+message from the lady?”
+
+“Well, it's like this, sir,” said Mrs. Cassley, leaning forward
+confidentially and speaking in the hollow tone which she had decided
+should accompany any revelation to a police officer, “this young lady
+said to me, 'If I don't come any night by 8 o'clock you must go to T. X.
+and tell him--'!”
+
+She paused dramatically.
+
+“Yes, yes,” said T. X. quickly, “for heaven's sake go on, woman.”
+
+“'Tell him,'” said Mrs. Cassley, “'that Belinda Mary--'”
+
+He sprang to his feet.
+
+“Belinda Mary!” he breathed, “Belinda Mary!” In a flash he saw it all.
+This girl with a knowledge of modern Greek, who was working in Kara's
+house, was there for a purpose. Kara had something of her mother's,
+something that was vital and which he would not part with, and she
+had adopted this method of securing that some thing. Mrs. Cassley
+was prattling on, but her voice was merely a haze of sound to him.
+It brought a strange glow to his heart that Belinda Mary should have
+thought of him.
+
+“Only as a policeman, of course,” said the still, small voice of his
+official self. “Perhaps!” said the human T. X., defiantly.
+
+He got on the telephone to Mansus and gave a few instructions.
+
+“You stay here,” he ordered the astounded Mrs. Cassley; “I am going to
+make a few investigations.”
+
+Kara was at home, but was in bed. T. X. remembered that this
+extraordinary man invariably went to bed early and that it was his
+practice to receive visitors in this guarded room of his. He was
+admitted almost at once and found Kara in his silk dressing-gown lying
+on the bed smoking. The heat of the room was unbearable even on that
+bleak February night.
+
+“This is a pleasant surprise,” said Kara, sitting up; “I hope you don't
+mind my dishabille.”
+
+T. X. came straight to the point.
+
+“Where is Miss Holland!” he asked.
+
+“Miss Holland?” Kara's eyebrows advertised his astonishment. “What an
+extraordinary question to ask me, my dear man! At her home, or at the
+theatre or in a cinema palace--I don't know how these people employ
+their evenings.”
+
+“She is not at home,” said T. X., “and I have reason to believe that she
+has not left this house.”
+
+“What a suspicious person you are, Mr. Meredith!” Kara rang the bell and
+Fisher came in with a cup of coffee on a tray.
+
+“Fisher,” drawled Kara. “Mr. Meredith is anxious to know where Miss
+Holland is. Will you be good enough to tell him, you know more about her
+movements than I do.”
+
+“As far as I know, sir,” said Fisher deferentially, “she left the house
+about 5.30, her usual hour. She sent me out a little before five on a
+message and when I came back her hat and her coat had gone, so I presume
+she had gone also.”
+
+“Did you see her go?” asked T. X.
+
+The man shook his head.
+
+“No, sir, I very seldom see the lady come or go. There has been no
+restrictions placed upon the young lady and she has been at liberty to
+move about as she likes. I think I am correct in saying that, sir,” he
+turned to Kara.
+
+Kara nodded.
+
+“You will probably find her at home.”
+
+He shook his finger waggishly at T. X.
+
+“What a dog you are,” he jibed, “I ought to keep the beauties of my
+household veiled, as we do in the East, and especially when I have a
+susceptible policeman wandering at large.”
+
+T. X. gave jest for jest. There was nothing to be gained by making
+trouble here. After a few amiable commonplaces he took his departure. He
+found Mrs. Cassley being entertained by Mansus with a wholly fictitious
+description of the famous criminals he had arrested.
+
+“I can only suggest that you go home,” said T. X. “I will send a police
+officer with you to report to me, but in all probability you will find
+the lady has returned. She may have had a difficulty in getting a bus on
+a night like this.”
+
+A detective was summoned from Scotland Yard and accompanied by him Mrs.
+Cassley returned to her domicile with a certain importance. T. X. looked
+at his watch. It was a quarter to ten.
+
+“Whatever happens, I must see old Lexman,” he said. “Tell the best men
+we've got in the department to stand by for eventualities. This is going
+to be one of my busy days.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Kara lay back on his down pillows with a sneer on his face and his brain
+very busy. What started the train of thought he did not know, but at
+that moment his mind was very far away. It carried him back a dozen
+years to a dirty little peasant's cabin on the hillside outside Durazzo,
+to the livid face of a young Albanian chief, who had lost at Kara's whim
+all that life held for a man, to the hateful eyes of the girl's father,
+who stood with folded arms glaring down at the bound and manacled figure
+on the floor, to the smoke-stained rafters of this peasant cottage and
+the dancing shadows on the roof, to that terrible hour of waiting when
+he sat bound to a post with a candle flickering and spluttering lower
+and lower to the little heap of gunpowder that would start the trail
+toward the clumsy infernal machine under his chair. He remembered the
+day well because it was Candlemas day, and this was the anniversary. He
+remembered other things more pleasant. The beat of hoofs on the rocky
+roadway, the crash of the door falling in when the Turkish Gendarmes
+had battered a way to his rescue. He remembered with a savage joy the
+spectacle of his would-be assassins twitching and struggling on the
+gallows at Pezara and--he heard the faint tinkle of the front door bell.
+
+Had T. X. returned! He slipped from the bed and went to the door, opened
+it slightly and listened. T. X. with a search warrant might be a source
+of panic especially if--he shrugged his shoulders. He had satisfied T.
+X. and allayed his suspicions. He would get Fisher out of the way that
+night and make sure.
+
+The voice from the hall below was loud and gruff. Who could it be! Then
+he heard Fisher's foot on the stairs and the valet entered.
+
+“Will you see Mr. Gathercole now!”
+
+“Mr. Gathercole!”
+
+Kara breathed a sigh of relief and his face was wreathed in smiles.
+
+“Why, of course. Tell him to come up. Ask him if he minds seeing me in
+my room.”
+
+“I told him you were in bed, sir, and he used shocking language,” said
+Fisher.
+
+Kara laughed.
+
+“Send him up,” he said, and then as Fisher was going out of the room he
+called him back.
+
+“By the way, Fisher, after Mr. Gathercole has gone, you may go out for
+the night. You've got somewhere to go, I suppose, and you needn't come
+back until the morning.”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said the servant.
+
+Such an instruction was remarkably pleasing to him. There was much that
+he had to do and that night's freedom would assist him materially.
+
+“Perhaps” Kara hesitated, “perhaps you had better wait until eleven
+o'clock. Bring me up some sandwiches and a large glass of milk. Or
+better still, place them on a plate in the hall.”
+
+“Very good, sir,” said the man and withdrew.
+
+Down below, that grotesque figure with his shiny hat and his ragged
+beard was walking up and down the tesselated hallway muttering to
+himself and staring at the various objects in the hall with a certain
+amused antagonism.
+
+“Mr. Kara will see you, sir,” said Fisher.
+
+“Oh!” said the other glaring at the unoffending Fisher, “that's very
+good of him. Very good of this person to see a scholar and a gentleman
+who has been about his dirty business for three years. Grown grey in his
+service! Do you understand that, my man!”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said Fisher.
+
+“Look here!”
+
+The man thrust out his face.
+
+“Do you see those grey hairs in my beard?”
+
+The embarrassed Fisher grinned.
+
+“Is it grey!” challenged the visitor, with a roar.
+
+“Yes, sir,” said the valet hastily.
+
+“Is it real grey?” insisted the visitor. “Pull one out and see!”
+
+The startled Fisher drew back with an apologetic smile.
+
+“I couldn't think of doing a thing like that, sir.”
+
+“Oh, you couldn't,” sneered the visitor; “then lead on!”
+
+Fisher showed the way up the stairs. This time the traveller carried
+no books. His left arm hung limply by his side and Fisher privately
+gathered that the hand had got loose from the detaining pocket
+without its owner being aware of the fact. He pushed open the door and
+announced, “Mr. Gathercole,” and Kara came forward with a smile to
+meet his agent, who, with top hat still on the top of his head, and his
+overcoat dangling about his heels, must have made a remarkable picture.
+
+Fisher closed the door behind them and returned to his duties in the
+hall below. Ten minutes later he heard the door opened and the booming
+voice of the stranger came down to him. Fisher went up the stairs to
+meet him and found him addressing the occupant of the room in his own
+eccentric fashion.
+
+“No more Patagonia!” he roared, “no more Tierra del Fuego!” he paused.
+
+“Certainly!” He replied to some question, “but not Patagonia,” he paused
+again, and Fisher standing at the foot of the stairs wondered what had
+occurred to make the visitor so genial.
+
+“I suppose your cheque will be honoured all right?” asked the visitor
+sardonically, and then burst into a little chuckle of laughter as he
+carefully closed the door.
+
+He came down the corridor talking to himself, and greeted Fisher.
+
+“Damn all Greeks,” he said jovially, and Fisher could do no more than
+smile reproachfully, the smile being his very own, the reproach being on
+behalf of the master who paid him.
+
+The traveller touched the other on the chest with his right hand.
+
+“Never trust a Greek,” he said, “always get your money in advance. Is
+that clear to you?”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said Fisher, “but I think you will always find that Mr. Kara
+is always most generous about money.”
+
+“Don't you believe it, don't you believe it, my poor man,” said the
+other, “you--”
+
+At that moment there came from Kara's room a faint “clang.”
+
+“What's that?” asked the visitor a little startled.
+
+“Mr. Kara's put down his steel latch,” said Fisher with a smile, “which
+means that he is not to be disturbed until--” he looked at his watch,
+“until eleven o'clock at any rate.”
+
+“He's a funk!” snapped the other, “a beastly funk!”
+
+He stamped down the stairs as though testing the weight of every tread,
+opened the front door without assistance, slammed it behind him and
+disappeared into the night.
+
+Fisher, his hands in his pockets, looked after the departing stranger,
+nodding his head in reprobation.
+
+“You're a queer old devil,” he said, and looked at his watch again.
+
+It wanted five minutes to ten.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+“IF you would care to come in, sir, I'm sure Lexman would be glad to
+see you,” said T. X.; “it's very kind of you to take an interest in the
+matter.”
+
+The Chief Commissioner of Police growled something about being paid to
+take an interest in everybody and strolled with T. X. down one of the
+apparently endless corridors of Scotland Yard.
+
+“You won't have any bother about the pardon,” he said. “I was dining
+to-night with old man Bartholomew and he will fix that up in the
+morning.”
+
+“There will be no necessity to detain Lexman in custody?” asked T. X.
+
+The Chief shook his head.
+
+“None whatever,” he said.
+
+There was a pause, then,
+
+“By the way, did Bartholomew mention Belinda Mary!”
+
+The white-haired chief looked round in astonishment.
+
+“And who the devil is Belinda Mary?” he asked.
+
+T. X. went red.
+
+“Belinda Mary,” he said a little quickly, “is Bartholomew's daughter.”
+
+“By Jove,” said the Commissioner, “now you mention it, he did--she is
+still in France.”
+
+“Oh, is she?” said T. X. innocently, and in his heart of hearts he
+wished most fervently that she was. They came to the room which Mansus
+occupied and found that admirable man waiting.
+
+Wherever policemen meet, their conversation naturally drifts to “shop”
+ and in two minutes the three were discussing with some animation and
+much difference of opinion, as far as T. X. was concerned, a series
+of frauds which had been perpetrated in the Midlands, and which have
+nothing to do with this story.
+
+“Your friend is late,” said the Chief Commissioner.
+
+“There he is,” cried T. X., springing up. He heard a familiar footstep
+on the flagged corridor, and sprung out of the room to meet the
+newcomer.
+
+For a moment he stood wringing the hand of this grave man, his heart too
+full for words.
+
+“My dear chap!” he said at last, “you don't know how glad I am to see
+you.”
+
+John Lexman said nothing, then,
+
+“I am sorry to bring you into this business, T. X.,” he said quietly.
+
+“Nonsense,” said the other, “come in and see the Chief.”
+
+He took John by the arm and led him into the Superintendent's room.
+
+There was a change in John Lexman. A subtle shifting of balance which
+was not readily discoverable. His face was older, the mobile mouth a
+little more grimly set, the eyes more deeply lined. He was in evening
+dress and looked, as T. X. thought, a typical, clean, English gentleman,
+such an one as any self-respecting valet would be proud to say he had
+“turned out.”
+
+T. X. looking at him carefully could see no great change, save that down
+one side of his smooth shaven cheek ran the scar of an old wound; which
+could not have been much more than superficial.
+
+“I must apologize for this kit,” said John, taking off his overcoat and
+laying it across the back of a chair, “but the fact is I was so bored
+this evening that I had to do something to pass the time away, so I
+dressed and went to the theatre--and was more bored than ever.”
+
+T. X. noticed that he did not smile and that when he spoke it was slowly
+and carefully, as though he were weighing the value of every word.
+
+“Now,” he went on, “I have come to deliver myself into your hands.”
+
+“I suppose you have not seen Kara?” said T. X.
+
+“I have no desire to see Kara,” was the short reply.
+
+“Well, Mr. Lexman,” broke in the Chief, “I don't think you are going to
+have any difficulty about your escape. By the way, I suppose it was by
+aeroplane?”
+
+Lexman nodded.
+
+“And you had an assistant?”
+
+Again Lexman nodded.
+
+“Unless you press me I would rather not discuss the matter for some
+little time, Sir George,” he said, “there is much that will happen
+before the full story of my escape is made known.”
+
+Sir George nodded.
+
+“We will leave it at that,” he said cheerily, “and now I hope you have
+come back to delight us all with one of your wonderful plots.”
+
+“For the time being I have done with wonderful plots,” said John Lexman
+in that even, deliberate tone of his. “I hope to leave London next week
+for New York and take up such of the threads of life as remain. The
+greater thread has gone.”
+
+The Chief Commissioner understood.
+
+The silence which followed was broken by the loud and insistent ringing
+of the telephone bell.
+
+“Hullo,” said Mansus rising quickly; “that's Kara's bell.”
+
+With two quick strides he was at the telephone and lifted down the
+receiver.
+
+“Hullo,” he cried. “Hullo,” he cried again. There was no reply, only
+the continuous buzzing, and when he hung up the receiver again, the bell
+continued ringing.
+
+The three policemen looked at one another.
+
+“There's trouble there,” said Mansus.
+
+“Take off the receiver,” said T. X., “and try again.”
+
+Mansus obeyed, but there was no response.
+
+“I am afraid this is not my affair,” said John Lexman gathering up his
+coat. “What do you wish me to do, Sir George?”
+
+“Come along to-morrow morning and see us, Lexman,” said Sir George,
+offering his hand.
+
+“Where are you staying!” asked T. X.
+
+“At the Great Midland,” replied the other, “at least my bags have gone
+on there.”
+
+“I'll come along and see you to-morrow morning. It's curious this should
+have happened the night you returned,” he said, gripping the other's
+shoulder affectionately.
+
+John Lexman did not speak for the moment.
+
+“If anything happened to Kara,” he said slowly, “if the worst that was
+possible happened to him, believe me I should not weep.”
+
+T. X. looked down into the other's eyes sympathetically.
+
+“I think he has hurt you pretty badly, old man,” he said gently.
+
+John Lexman nodded.
+
+“He has, damn him,” he said between his teeth.
+
+The Chief Commissioner's motor car was waiting outside and in this T.
+X., Mansus, and a detective-sergeant were whirled off to Cadogan Square.
+Fisher was in the hall when they rung the bell and opened the door
+instantly.
+
+He was frankly surprised to see his visitors. Mr. Kara was in his room
+he explained resentfully, as though T. X. should have been aware of the
+fact without being told. He had heard no bell ringing and indeed had not
+been summoned to the room.
+
+“I have to see him at eleven o'clock,” he said, “and I have had standing
+instructions not to go to him unless I am sent for.”
+
+T. X. led the way upstairs, and went straight to Kara's room. He
+knocked, but there was no reply. He knocked again and on this failing to
+evoke any response kicked heavily at the door.
+
+“Have you a telephone downstairs!” he asked.
+
+“Yes, sir,” replied Fisher.
+
+T. X. turned to the detective-sergeant.
+
+“'Phone to the Yard,” he said, “and get a man up with a bag of tools. We
+shall have to pick this lock and I haven't got my case with me.”
+
+“Picking the lock would be no good, sir,” said Fisher, an interested
+spectator, “Mr. Kara's got the latch down.”
+
+“I forgot that,” said T. X. “Tell him to bring his saw, we'll have to
+cut through the panel here.”
+
+While they were waiting for the arrival of the police officer T. X.
+strove to attract the attention of the inmates of the room, but without
+success.
+
+“Does he take opium or anything!” asked Mansus.
+
+Fisher shook his head.
+
+“I've never known him to take any of that kind of stuff,” he said.
+
+T. X. made a rapid survey of the other rooms on that floor. The room
+next to Kara's was the library, beyond that was a dressing room which,
+according to Fisher, Miss Holland had used, and at the farthermost end
+of the corridor was the dining room.
+
+Facing the dining room was a small service lift and by its side a
+storeroom in which were a number of trunks, including a very large one
+smothered in injunctions in three different languages to “handle with
+care.” There was nothing else of interest on this floor and the upper
+and lower floors could wait. In a quarter of an hour the carpenter had
+arrived from Scotland Yard, and had bored a hole in the rosewood panel
+of Kara's room and was busily applying his slender saw.
+
+Through the hole he cut T. X. could see no more than that the room was
+in darkness save for the glow of a blazing fire. He inserted his hand,
+groped for the knob of the steel latch, which he had remarked on his
+previous visit to the room, lifted it and the door swung open.
+
+“Keep outside, everybody,” he ordered.
+
+He felt for the switch of the electric, found it and instantly the room
+was flooded with light. The bed was hidden by the open door. T. X. took
+one stride into the room and saw enough. Kara was lying half on and half
+off the bed. He was quite dead and the blood-stained patch above his
+heart told its own story.
+
+T. X. stood looking down at him, saw the frozen horror on the dead man's
+face, then drew his eyes away and slowly surveyed the room. There in the
+middle of the carpet he found his clue, a bent and twisted little candle
+such as you find on children's Christmas trees.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+It was Mansus who found the second candle, a stouter affair. It lay
+underneath the bed. The telephone, which stood on a fairly large-sized
+table by the side of the bed, was overturned and the receiver was on the
+floor. By its side were two books, one being the “Balkan Question,”
+ by Villari, and the other “Travels and Politics in the Near East,” by
+Miller. With them was a long, ivory paper-knife.
+
+There was nothing else on the bedside-table save a silver cigarette
+box. T. X. drew on a pair of gloves and examined the bright surface for
+finger-prints, but a superficial view revealed no such clue.
+
+“Open the window,” said T. X., “the heat here is intolerable. Be very
+careful, Mansus. By the way, is the window fastened?”
+
+“Very well fastened,” said the superintendent after a careful scrutiny.
+
+He pushed back the fastenings, lifted the window and as he did, a harsh
+bell rang in the basement.
+
+“That is the burglar alarm, I suppose,” said T. X.; “go down and stop
+that bell.”
+
+He addressed Fisher, who stood with a troubled face at the door. When
+he had disappeared T. X. gave a significant glance to one of the waiting
+officers and the man sauntered after the valet.
+
+Fisher stopped the bell and came back to the hall and stood before the
+hall fire, a very troubled man. Near the fire was a big, oaken writing
+table and on this there lay a small envelope which he did not remember
+having seen before, though it might have been there for some time, for
+he had spent a greater portion of the evening in the kitchen with the
+cook.
+
+He picked up the envelope, and, with a start, recognised that it was
+addressed to himself. He opened it and took out a card. There were only
+a few words written upon it, but they were sufficient to banish all the
+colour from his face and set his hands shaking. He took the envelope and
+card and flung them into the fire.
+
+It so happened that, at that moment, Mansus had called from upstairs,
+and the officer, who had been told off to keep the valet under
+observation, ran up in answer to the summons. For a moment Fisher
+hesitated, then hatless and coatless as he was, he crept to the door,
+opened it, leaving it ajar behind him and darting down the steps, ran
+like a hare from the house.
+
+The doctor, who came a little later, was cautious as to the hour of
+death.
+
+“If you got your telephone message at 10.25, as you say, that was
+probably the hour he was killed,” he said. “I could not tell within half
+an hour. Obviously the man who killed him gripped his throat with his
+left hand--there are the bruises on his neck--and stabbed him with the
+right.”
+
+It was at this time that the disappearance of Fisher was noticed, but
+the cross-examination of the terrified Mrs. Beale removed any doubt that
+T. X. had as to the man's guilt.
+
+“You had better send out an 'All Stations' message and pull him in,”
+ said T. X. “He was with the cook from the moment the visitor left until
+a few minutes before we rang. Besides which it is obviously impossible
+for anybody to have got into this room or out again. Have you searched
+the dead man?”
+
+Mansus produced a tray on which Kara's belongings had been disposed.
+The ordinary keys Mrs. Beale was able to identify. There were one or two
+which were beyond her. T. X. recognised one of these as the key of the
+safe, but two smaller keys baffled him not a little, and Mrs. Beale was
+at first unable to assist him.
+
+“The only thing I can think of, sir,” she said, “is the wine cellar.”
+
+“The wine cellar?” said T. X. slowly. “That must be--” he stopped.
+
+The greater tragedy of the evening, with all its mystifying aspects had
+not banished from his mind the thought of the girl--that Belinda Mary,
+who had called upon him in her hour of danger as he divined. Perhaps--he
+descended into the kitchen and was brought face to face with the
+unpainted door.
+
+“It looks more like a prison than a wine cellar,” he said.
+
+“That's what I've always thought, sir,” said Mrs. Beale, “and sometimes
+I've had a horrible feeling of fear.”
+
+He cut short her loquacity by inserting one of the keys in the lock--it
+did not turn, but he had more success with the second. The lock snapped
+back easily and he pulled the door back. He found the inner door bolted
+top and bottom. The bolts slipped back in their well-oiled sockets
+without any effort. Evidently Kara used this place pretty frequently,
+thought T. X.
+
+He pushed the door open and stopped with an exclamation of surprise. The
+cellar apartment was brilliantly lit--but it was unoccupied.
+
+“This beats the band,” said T. X.
+
+He saw something on the table and lifted it up. It was a pair of
+long-bladed scissors and about the handle was wound a handkerchief. It
+was not this fact which startled him, but that the scissors' blades were
+dappled with blood and blood, too, was on the handkerchief. He unwound
+the flimsy piece of cambric and stared at the monogram “B. M. B.”
+
+He looked around. Nobody had seen the weapon and he dropped it in his
+overcoat pocket, and walked from the cellar to the kitchen where Mrs.
+Beale and Mansus awaited him.
+
+“There is a lower cellar, is there not!” he asked in a strained voice.
+
+“That was bricked up when Mr. Kara took the house,” explained the woman.
+
+“There is nothing more to look for here,” he said.
+
+He walked slowly up the stairs to the library, his mind in a whirl. That
+he, an accredited officer of police, sworn to the business of criminal
+detection, should attempt to screen one who was conceivably a criminal
+was inexplicable. But if the girl had committed this crime, how had she
+reached Kara's room and why had she returned to the locked cellar!
+
+He sent for Mrs. Beale to interrogate her. She had heard nothing and
+she had been in the kitchen all the evening. One fact she did reveal,
+however, that Fisher had gone from the kitchen and had been absent a
+quarter of an hour and had returned a little agitated.
+
+“Stay here,” said T. X., and went down again to the cellar to make a
+further search.
+
+“Probably there is some way out of this subterranean jail,” he thought
+and a diligent search of the room soon revealed it.
+
+He found the iron trap, pulled it open, and slipped down the stairs. He,
+too, was puzzled by the luxurious character of the vault. He passed from
+room to room and finally came to the inner chamber where a light was
+burning.
+
+The light, as he discovered, proceeded from a small reading lamp which
+stood by the side of a small brass bedstead. The bed had recently been
+slept in, but there was no sign of any occupant. T. X. conducted a very
+careful search and had no difficulty in finding the bricked up door.
+Other exits there were none.
+
+The floor was of wood block laid on concrete, the ventilation was
+excellent and in one of the recesses which had evidently held at so
+time or other, a large wine bin, there was a prefect electrical cooking
+plant. In a small larder were a number of baskets, bearing the name of
+a well-known caterer, one of them containing an excellent assortment of
+cold and potted meats, preserves, etc.
+
+T. X. went back to the bedroom and took the little lamp from the table
+by the side of the bed and began a more careful examination. Presently
+he found traces of blood, and followed an irregular trail to the outer
+room. He lost it suddenly at the foot of stairs leading down from the
+upper cellar. Then he struck it again. He had reached the end of his
+electric cord and was now depending upon an electric torch he had taken
+from his pocket.
+
+There were indications of something heavy having been dragged across the
+room and he saw that it led to a small bathroom. He had made a cursory
+examination of this well-appointed apartment, and now he proceeded to
+make a close investigation and was well rewarded.
+
+The bathroom was the only apartment which possess anything resembling a
+door--a two-fold screen and--as he pressed this back, he felt some
+thing which prevented its wider extension. He slipped into the room and
+flashed his lamp in the space behind the screen. There stiff in death
+with glazed eyes and lolling tongue lay a great gaunt dog, his yellow
+fangs exposed in a last grimace.
+
+
+About the neck was a collar and attached to that, a few links of broken
+chain. T. X. mounted the steps thoughtfully and passed out to the
+kitchen.
+
+Did Belinda Mary stab Kara or kill the dog? That she killed one hound or
+the other was certain. That she killed both was possible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+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.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+February as a rule is not a month of fogs, but rather a month of
+tempestuous gales, of frosts and snowfalls, but the night of February
+17th, 19--, was one of calm and mist. It was not the typical London fog
+so dreaded by the foreigner, but one of those little patchy mists which
+smoke through the streets, now enshrouding and making the nearest object
+invisible, now clearing away to the finest diaphanous filament of pale
+grey.
+
+Sir William Bartholomew had a house in Portman Place, which is a wide
+thoroughfare, filled with solemn edifices of unlovely and forbidding
+exterior, but remarkably comfortable within. Shortly before eleven on
+the night of February 17th, a taxi drew up at the junction of Sussex
+Street and Portman Place, and a girl alighted. The fog at that moment
+was denser than usual and she hesitated a moment before she left the
+shelter which the cab afforded.
+
+She gave the driver a few instructions and walked on with a firm step,
+turning abruptly and mounting the steps of Number 173. Very quickly she
+inserted her key in the lock, pushed the door open and closed it behind
+her. She switched on the hall light. The house sounded hollow and
+deserted, a fact which afforded her considerable satisfaction. She
+turned the light out and found her way up the broad stairs to the first
+floor, paused for a moment to switch on another light which she knew
+would not be observable from the street outside and mounted the second
+flight.
+
+Miss Belinda Mary Bartholomew congratulated herself upon the success of
+her scheme, and the only doubt that was in her mind now was whether
+the boudoir had been locked, but her father was rather careless in such
+matters and Jacks the butler was one of those dear, silly, old men who
+never locked anything, and, in consequence, faced every audit with a
+long face and a longer tale of the peculations of occasional servants.
+
+To her immense relief the handle turned and the door opened to her
+touch. Somebody had had the sense to pull down the blinds and the
+curtains were drawn. She switched on the light with a sigh of relief.
+Her mother's writing table was covered with unopened letters, but she
+brushed these aside in her search for the little parcel. It was not
+there and her heart sank. Perhaps she had put it in one of the drawers.
+She tried them all without result.
+
+She stood by the desk a picture of perplexity, biting a finger
+thoughtfully.
+
+“Thank goodness!” she said with a jump, for she saw the parcel on the
+mantel shelf, crossed the room and took it down.
+
+With eager hands she tore off the covering and came to the familiar
+leather case. Not until she had opened the padded lid and had seen the
+snuffbox reposing in a bed of cotton wool did she relapse into a long
+sigh of relief.
+
+“Thank heaven for that,” she said aloud.
+
+“And me,” said a voice.
+
+She sprang up and turned round with a look of terror.
+
+“Mr.--Mr. Meredith,” she stammered.
+
+T. X. stood by the window curtains from whence he had made his dramatic
+entry upon the scene.
+
+“I say you have to thank me also, Miss Bartholomew,” he said presently.
+
+“How do you know my name?” she asked with some curiosity.
+
+“I know everything in the world,” he answered, and she smiled. Suddenly
+her face went serious and she demanded sharply,
+
+“Who sent you after me--Mr. Kara?”
+
+“Mr. Kara?” he repeated, in wonder.
+
+“He threatened to send for the police,” she went on rapidly, “and I told
+him he might do so. I didn't mind the police--it was Kara I was afraid
+of. You know what I went for, my mother's property.”
+
+She held the snuff-box in her outstretched hand.
+
+“He accused me of stealing and was hateful, and then he put me
+downstairs in that awful cellar and--”
+
+“And?” suggested T. X.
+
+“That's all,” she replied with tightened lips; “what are you going to do
+now?”
+
+“I am going to ask you a few questions if I may,” he said. “In the first
+place have you not heard anything about Mr. Kara since you went away?”
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“I have kept out of his way,” she said grimly.
+
+“Have you seen the newspapers?” he asked.
+
+She nodded.
+
+“I have seen the advertisement column--I wired asking Papa to reply to
+my telegram.”
+
+“I know--I saw it,” he smiled; “that is what brought me here.”
+
+“I was afraid it would,” she said ruefully; “father is awfully
+loquacious in print--he makes speeches you know. All I wanted him to say
+was yes or no. What do you mean about the newspapers?” she went on. “Is
+anything wrong with mother?”
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“So far as I know Lady Bartholomew is in the best of health and is on
+her way home.”
+
+“Then what do you mean by asking me about the newspapers!” she demanded;
+“why should I see the newspapers--what is there for me to see?”
+
+“About Kara?” he suggested.
+
+She shook her head in bewilderment.
+
+“I know and want to know nothing about Kara. Why do you say this to me?”
+
+“Because,” said T. X. slowly, “on the night you disappeared from Cadogan
+Square, Remington Kara was murdered.”
+
+“Murdered,” she gasped.
+
+He nodded.
+
+“He was stabbed to the heart by some person or persons unknown.”
+
+T. X. took his hand from his pocket and pulled something out which was
+wrapped in tissue paper. This he carefully removed and the girl watched
+with fascinated gaze, and with an awful sense of apprehension. Presently
+the object was revealed. It was a pair of scissors with the handle
+wrapped about with a small handkerchief dappled with brown stains. She
+took a step backward, raising her hands to her cheeks.
+
+“My scissors,” she said huskily; “you won't think--”
+
+She stared up at him, fear and indignation struggling for mastery.
+
+“I don't think you committed the murder,” he smiled; “if that's what
+you mean to ask me, but if anybody else found those scissors and had
+identified this handkerchief you would have been in rather a fix, my
+young friend.”
+
+She looked at the scissors and shuddered.
+
+“I did kill something,” she said in a low voice, “an awful dog... I
+don't know how I did it, but the beastly thing jumped at me and I just
+stabbed him and killed him, and I am glad,” she nodded many times and
+repeated, “I am glad.”
+
+“So I gather--I found the dog and now perhaps you'll explain why I
+didn't find you?”
+
+Again she hesitated and he felt that she was hiding something from him.
+
+“I don't know why you didn't find me,” she said; “I was there.”
+
+“How did you get out?”
+
+“How did you get out?” she challenged him boldly.
+
+“I got out through the door,” he confessed; “it seems a ridiculously
+commonplace way of leaving but that's the only way I could see.”
+
+“And that's how I got out,” she answered, with a little smile.
+
+“But it was locked.”
+
+She laughed.
+
+“I see now,” she said; “I was in the cellar. I heard your key in the
+lock and bolted down the trap, leaving those awful scissors behind. I
+thought it was Kara with some of his friends and then the voices died
+away and I ventured to come up and found you had left the door open.
+So--so I--”
+
+These queer little pauses puzzled T. X. There was something she was not
+telling him. Something she had yet to reveal.
+
+“So I got away you see,” she went on. “I came out into the kitchen;
+there was nobody there, and I passed through the area door and up the
+steps and just round the corner I found a taxicab, and that is all.”
+
+She spread out her hands in a dramatic little gesture.
+
+“And that is all, is it?” said T. X.
+
+“That is all,” she repeated; “now what are you going to do?”
+
+T. X. looked up at the ceiling and stroked his chin.
+
+“I suppose that I ought to arrest you. I feel that something is due from
+me. May I ask if you were sleeping in the bed downstairs?”
+
+“In the lower cellar?” she demanded,--a little pause and then, “Yes, I
+was sleeping in the cellar downstairs.”
+
+There was that interval of hesitation almost between each word.
+
+“What are you going to do?” she asked again.
+
+She was feeling more sure of herself and had suppressed the panic which
+his sudden appearance had produced in her. He rumpled his hair, a gross
+imitation, did she but know it, of one of his chief's mannerisms and she
+observed that his hair was very thick and inclined to curl. She saw also
+that he was passably good looking, had fine grey eyes, a straight nose
+and a most firm chin.
+
+“I think,” she suggested gently, “you had better arrest me.”
+
+“Don't be silly,” he begged.
+
+She stared at him in amazement.
+
+“What did you say?” she asked wrathfully.
+
+“I said 'don't be silly,'” repeated the calm young man.
+
+“Do you know that you're being very rude?” she asked.
+
+He seemed interested and surprised at this novel view of his conduct.
+
+“Of course,” she went on carefully smoothing her dress and avoiding his
+eye, “I know you think I am silly and that I've got a most comic name.”
+
+“I have never said your name was comic,” he replied coldly; “I would not
+take so great a liberty.”
+
+“You said it was 'weird' which was worse,” she claimed.
+
+“I may have said it was 'weird,”' he admitted, “but that's rather
+different to saying it was 'comic.' There is dignity in weird things.
+For example, nightmares aren't comic but they're weird.”
+
+“Thank you,” she said pointedly.
+
+“Not that I mean your name is anything approaching a nightmare.” He made
+this concession with a most magnificent sweep of hand as though he were
+a king conceding her the right to remain covered in his presence. “I
+think that Belinda Ann--”
+
+“Belinda Mary,” she corrected.
+
+“Belinda Mary, I was going to say, or as a matter of fact,” he
+floundered, “I was going to say Belinda and Mary.”
+
+“You were going to say nothing of the kind,” she corrected him.
+
+“Anyway, I think Belinda Mary is a very pretty name.”
+
+“You think nothing of the sort.”
+
+She saw the laughter in his eyes and felt an insane desire to laugh.
+
+“You said it was a weird name and you think it is a weird name, but I
+really can't be bothered considering everybody's views. I think it's a
+weird name, too. I was named after an aunt,” she added in self-defence.
+
+“There you have the advantage of me,” he inclined his head politely; “I
+was named after my father's favourite dog.”
+
+“What does T. X. stand for?” she asked curiously.
+
+“Thomas Xavier,” he said, and she leant back in the big chair on
+the edge of which a few minutes before she had perched herself in
+trepidation and dissolved into a fit of immoderate laughter.
+
+“It is comic, isn't it?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, I am sorry I'm so rude,” she gasped. “Fancy being called Tommy
+Xavier--I mean Thomas Xavier.”
+
+“You may call me Tommy if you wish--most of my friends do.”
+
+“Unfortunately I'm not your friend,” she said, still smiling and wiping
+the tears from her eyes, “so I shall go on calling you Mr. Meredith if
+you don't mind.”
+
+She looked at her watch.
+
+“If you are not going to arrest me I'm going,” she said.
+
+“I have certainly no intention of arresting you,” said he, “but I am
+going to see you home!”
+
+She jumped up smartly.
+
+“You're not,” she commanded.
+
+She was so definite in this that he was startled.
+
+“My dear child,” he protested.
+
+“Please don't 'dear child' me,” she said seriously; “you're going to be
+a good little Tommy and let me go home by myself.”
+
+She held out her hand frankly and the laughing appeal in her eyes was
+irresistible.
+
+“Well, I'll see you to a cab,” he insisted.
+
+“And listen while I give the driver instructions where he is to take
+me?”
+
+She shook her head reprovingly.
+
+“It must be an awful thing to be a policeman.”
+
+He stood back with folded arms, a stern frown on his face.
+
+“Don't you trust me?” he asked.
+
+“No,” she replied.
+
+“Quite right,” he approved; “anyway I'll see you to the cab and you can
+tell the driver to go to Charing Cross station and on your way you can
+change your direction.”
+
+“And you promise you won't follow me?” she asked.
+
+“On my honour,” he swore; “on one condition though.”
+
+“I will make no conditions,” she replied haughtily.
+
+“Please come down from your great big horse,” he begged, “and listen
+to reason. The condition I make is that I can always bring you to an
+appointed rendezvous whenever I want you. Honestly, this is necessary,
+Belinda Mary.”
+
+“Miss Bartholomew,” she corrected, coldly.
+
+“It is necessary,” he went on, “as you will understand. Promise me that,
+if I put an advertisement in the agonies of either an evening paper
+which I will name or in the Morning Port, you will keep the appointment
+I fix, if it is humanly possible.”
+
+She hesitated a moment, then held out her hand.
+
+“I promise,” she said.
+
+“Good for you, Belinda Mary,” said he, and tucking her arm in his he
+led her out of the room switching off the light and racing her down the
+stairs.
+
+If there was a lot of the schoolgirl left in Belinda Mary Bartholomew,
+no less of the schoolboy was there in this Commissioner of Police. He
+would have danced her through the fog, contemptuous of the proprieties,
+but he wasn't so very anxious to get her to her cab and to lose sight of
+her.
+
+“Good-night,” he said, holding her hand.
+
+“That's the third time you've shaken hands with me to-night,” she
+interjected.
+
+“Don't let us have any unpleasantness at the last,” he pleaded, “and
+remember.”
+
+“I have promised,” she replied.
+
+“And one day,” he went on, “you will tell me all that happened in that
+cellar.”
+
+“I have told you,” she said in a low voice.
+
+“You have not told me everything, child.”
+
+He handed her into the cab. He shut the door behind her and leant
+through the open window.
+
+“Victoria or Marble Arch?” he asked politely.
+
+“Charing Cross,” she replied, with a little laugh.
+
+He watched the cab drive away and then suddenly it stopped and a figure
+lent out from the window beckoning him frantically. He ran up to her.
+
+“Suppose I want you,” she asked.
+
+“Advertise,” he said promptly, “beginning your advertisement 'Dear
+Tommy.”'
+
+“I shall put 'T. X.,'” she said indignantly.
+
+“Then I shall take no notice of your advertisement,” he replied and
+stood in the middle of the street, his hat in his hand, to the intense
+annoyance of a taxi-cab driver who literally all but ran him down and in
+a figurative sense did so until T. X. was out of earshot.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Thomas Xavier Meredith was a shrewd young man. It was said of him by
+Signor Paulo Coselli, the eminent criminologist, that he had a gift of
+intuition which was abnormal. Probably the mystery of the twisted candle
+was solved by him long before any other person in the world had the
+dimmest idea that it was capable of solution.
+
+The house in Cadogan Square was still in the hands of the police. To
+this house and particularly to Kara's bedroom T. X. from time to
+time repaired, and reproduced as far as possible the conditions which
+obtained on the night of the murder. He had the same stifling fire, the
+same locked door. The latch was dropped in its socket, whilst T. X.,
+with a stop watch in his hand, made elaborate calculations and acted
+certain parts which he did not reveal to a soul.
+
+Three times, accompanied by Mansus, he went to the house, three times
+went to the death chamber and was alone on one occasion for an hour and
+a half whilst the patient Mansus waited outside. Three times he emerged
+looking graver on each occasion, and after the third visit he called
+into consultation John Lexman.
+
+Lexman had been spending some time in the country, having deferred his
+trip to the United States.
+
+“This case puzzles me more and more, John,” said T. X., troubled out
+of his usual boisterous self, “and thank heaven it worries other people
+besides me. De Mainau came over from France the other day and brought
+all his best sleuths, whilst O'Grady of the New York central office paid
+a flying visit just to get hold of the facts. Not one of them has
+given me the real solution, though they've all been rather
+ingenious. Gathercole has vanished and is probably on his way to some
+undiscoverable region, and our people have not yet traced the valet.”
+
+“He should be the easiest for you,” said John Lexman, reflectively.
+
+“Why Gathercole should go off I can't understand,” T. X. continued.
+“According to the story which was told me by Fisher, his last words to
+Kara were to the effect that he was expecting a cheque or that he had
+received a cheque. No cheque has been presented or drawn and apparently
+Gathercole has gone off without waiting for any payment. An examination
+of Kara's books show nothing against the Gathercole account save the
+sum of 600 pounds which was originally advanced, and now to upset all my
+calculations, look at this.”
+
+He took from his pocketbook a newspaper cutting and pushed it across the
+table, for they were dining together at the Carlton. John Lexman picked
+up the slip and read. It was evidently from a New York paper:
+
+“Further news has now come to hand by the Antarctic Trading Company's
+steamer, Cyprus, concerning the wreck of the City of the Argentine. It
+is believed that this ill-fated vessel, which called at South American
+ports, lost her propellor and drifted south out of the track of
+shipping. This theory is now confirmed. Apparently the ship struck an
+iceberg on December 23rd and foundered with all aboard save a few men
+who were able to launch a boat and who were picked up by the Cyprus. The
+following is the passenger list.”
+
+John Lexman ran down the list until he came upon the name which was
+evidently underlined in ink by T. X. That name was George Gathercole and
+after it in brackets (Explorer).
+
+“If that were true, then, Gathercole could not have come to London.”
+
+“He may have taken another boat,” said T. X., “and I cabled to the
+Steamship Company without any great success. Apparently Gathercole was
+an eccentric sort of man and lived in terror of being overcrowded.
+It was a habit of his to make provisional bookings by every available
+steamer. The company can tell me no more than that he had booked, but
+whether he shipped on the City of the Argentine or not, they do not
+know.”
+
+“I can tell you this about Gathercole,” said John slowly and
+thoughtfully, “that he was a man who would not hurt a fly. He was
+incapable of killing any man, being constitutionally averse to taking
+life in any shape. For this reason he never made collections of
+butterflies or of bees, and I believe has never shot an animal in
+his life. He carried his principles to such an extent that he was a
+vegetarian--poor old Gathercole!” he said, with the first smile which T.
+X. had seen on his face since he came back.
+
+“If you want to sympathize with anybody,” said T. X. gloomily,
+“sympathize with me.”
+
+On the following day T. X. was summoned to the Home Office and went
+steeled for a most unholy row. The Home Secretary, a large and worthy
+gentleman, given to the making of speeches on every excuse, received
+him, however, with unusual kindness.
+
+“I've sent for you, Mr. Meredith,” he said, “about this unfortunate
+Greek. I've had all his private papers looked into and translated and in
+some cases decoded, because as you are probably aware his diaries and
+a great deal of his correspondence were in a code which called for the
+attention of experts.”
+
+T. X. had not troubled himself greatly about Kara's private papers but
+had handed them over, in accordance with instructions, to the proper
+authorities.
+
+“Of course, Mr. Meredith,” the Home Secretary went on, beaming across
+his big table, “we expect you to continue your search for the murderer,
+but I must confess that your prisoner when you secure him will have a
+very excellent case to put to a jury.”
+
+“That I can well believe, sir,” said T. X.
+
+“Seldom in my long career at the bar,” began the Home Secretary in
+his best oratorical manner, “have I examined a record so utterly
+discreditable as that of the deceased man.”
+
+Here he advanced a few instances which surprised even T. X.
+
+“The man was a lunatic,” continued the Home Secretary, “a vicious, evil
+man who loved cruelty for cruelty's sake. We have in this diary alone
+sufficient evidence to convict him of three separate murders, one of
+which was committed in this country.”
+
+T. X. looked his astonishment.
+
+“You will remember, Mr. Meredith, as I saw in one of your reports, that
+he had a chauffeur, a Greek named Poropulos.”
+
+T. X. nodded.
+
+“He went to Greece on the day following the shooting of Vassalaro,” he
+said.
+
+The Home Secretary shook his head.
+
+“He was killed on the same night,” said the Minister, “and you will have
+no difficulty in finding what remains of his body in the disused house
+which Kara rented for his own purpose on the Portsmouth Road. That he
+has killed a number of people in Albania you may well suppose. Whole
+villages have been wiped out to provide him with a little excitement.
+The man was a Nero without any of Nero's amiable weaknesses. He was
+obsessed with the idea that he himself was in danger of assassination,
+and saw an enemy even in his trusty servant. Undoubtedly the chauffeur
+Poropulos was in touch with several Continental government circles. You
+understand,” said the Minister in conclusion, “that I am telling you
+this, not with the idea of expecting you, to relax your efforts to find
+the murderer and clear up the mystery, but in order that you may know
+something of the possible motive for this man's murder.”
+
+T. X. spent an hour going over the decoded diary and documents and left
+the Home Office a little shakily. It was inconceivable, incredible. Kara
+was a lunatic, but the directing genius was a devil.
+
+T. X. had a flat in Whitehall Gardens and thither he repaired to change
+for dinner. He was half dressed when the evening paper arrived and
+he glanced as was his wont first at the news' page and then at the
+advertisement column. He looked down the column marked “Personal”
+ without expecting to find anything of particular interest to himself,
+but saw that which made him drop the paper and fly round the room in a
+frenzy to complete his toilet.
+
+“Tommy X.,” ran the brief announcement, “most urgent, Marble Arch 8.”
+
+He had five minutes to get there but it seemed like five hours. He
+was held up at almost every crossing and though he might have used his
+authority to obtain right of way, it was a step which his curious sense
+of honesty prevented him taking. He leapt out of the cab before it
+stopped, thrust the fare into the driver's hands and looked round for
+the girl. He saw her at last and walked quickly towards her. As he
+approached her, she turned about and with an almost imperceptible
+beckoning gesture walked away. He followed her along the Bayswater Road
+and gradually drew level.
+
+“I am afraid I have been watched,” she said in a low voice. “Will you
+call a cab?”
+
+He hailed a passing taxi, helped her in and gave at random the first
+place that suggested itself to him, which was Finsbury Park.
+
+“I am very worried,” she said, “and I don't know anybody who can help me
+except you.”
+
+“Is it money?” he asked.
+
+“Money,” she said scornfully, “of course it isn't money. I want to show
+you a letter,” she said after a while.
+
+She took it from her bag and gave it to him and he struck a match and
+read it with difficulty.
+
+It was written in a studiously uneducated hand.
+
+     “Dear Miss,
+
+     “I know who you are.  You are wanted by the police but I
+     will not give you away.  Dear Miss.  I am very hard up and
+     20 pounds will be very useful to me and I shall not trouble
+     you again.  Dear Miss.  Put the money on the window sill of
+     your room.  I know you sleep on the ground floor and I will
+     come in and take it.  And if not--well, I don't want to make
+     any trouble.
+
+     “Yours truly,
+
+     “A FRIEND.”
+
+“When did you get this?” he asked.
+
+“This morning,” she replied. “I sent the Agony to the paper by telegram,
+I knew you would come.”
+
+“Oh, you did, did you?” he said.
+
+Her assurance was very pleasing to him. The faith that her words implied
+gave him an odd little feeling of comfort and happiness.
+
+“I can easily get you out of this,” he added; “give me your address and
+when the gentleman comes--”
+
+“That is impossible,” she replied hurriedly. “Please don't think I'm
+ungrateful, and don't think I'm being silly--you do think I'm being
+silly, don't you!”
+
+“I have never harboured such an unworthy thought,” he said virtuously.
+
+“Yes, you have,” she persisted, “but really I can't tell you where I am
+living. I have a very special reason for not doing so. It's not myself
+that I'm thinking about, but there's a life involved.”
+
+This was a somewhat dramatic statement to make and she felt she had gone
+too far.
+
+“Perhaps I don't mean that,” she said, “but there is some one I care
+for--” she dropped her voice.
+
+“Oh,” said T. X. blankly.
+
+He came down from his rosy heights into the shadow and darkness of a
+sunless valley.
+
+“Some one you care for,” he repeated after a while.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+There was another long silence, then,
+
+“Oh, indeed,” said T. X.
+
+Again the unbroken interval of quiet and after a while she said in a low
+voice, “Not that way.”
+
+“Not what way!” asked T. X. huskily, his spirits doing a little
+mountaineering.
+
+“The way you mean,” she said.
+
+“Oh,” said T. X.
+
+He was back again amidst the rosy snows of dawn, was in fact climbing
+a dizzy escalier on the topmost height of hope's Mont Blanc when she
+pulled the ladder from under him.
+
+“I shall, of course, never marry,” she said with a certain prim
+decision.
+
+T. X. fell with a dull sickening thud, discovering that his rosy snows
+were not unlike cold, hard ice in their lack of resilience.
+
+“Who said you would?” he asked somewhat feebly, but in self defence.
+
+“You did,” she said, and her audacity took his breath away.
+
+“Well, how am I to help you!” he asked after a while.
+
+“By giving me some advice,” she said; “do you think I ought to put the
+money there!”
+
+“Indeed I do not,” said T. X., recovering some of his natural dominance;
+“apart from the fact that you would be compounding a felony, you would
+merely be laying out trouble for yourself in the future. If he can get
+20 pounds so easily, he will come for 40 pounds. But why do you stay
+away, why don't you return home? There's no charge and no breath of
+suspicion against you.”
+
+“Because I have something to do which I have set my mind to,” she said,
+with determination in her tones.
+
+“Surely you can trust me with your address,” he urged her, “after all
+that has passed between us, Belinda Mary--after all the years we have
+known one another.”
+
+“I shall get out and leave you,” she said steadily.
+
+“But how the dickens am I going to help you?” he protested.
+
+“Don't swear,” she could be very severe indeed; “the only way you can
+help me is by being kind and sympathetic.”
+
+“Would you like me to burst into tears?” he asked sarcastically.
+
+“I ask you to do nothing more painful or repugnant to your natural
+feelings than to be a gentleman,” she said.
+
+“Thank you very kindly,” said T. X., and leant back in the cab with an
+air of supreme resignation.
+
+“I believe you're making faces in the dark,” she accused him.
+
+“God forbid that I should do anything so low,” said he hastily; “what
+made you think that?”
+
+“Because I was putting my tongue out at you,” she admitted, and the taxi
+driver heard the shrieks of laughter in the cab behind him above the
+wheezing of his asthmatic engine.
+
+At twelve that night in a certain suburb of London an overcoated man
+moved stealthily through a garden. He felt his way carefully along the
+wall of the house and groped with hope, but with no great certainty,
+along the window sill. He found an envelope which his fingers, somewhat
+sensitive from long employment in nefarious uses, told him contained
+nothing more substantial than a letter.
+
+He went back through the garden and rejoined his companion, who was
+waiting under an adjacent lamp-post.
+
+“Did she drop?” asked the other eagerly.
+
+“I don't know yet,” growled the man from the garden.
+
+He opened the envelope and read the few lines.
+
+“She hasn't got the money,” he said, “but she's going to get it. I must
+meet her to-morrow afternoon at the corner of Oxford Street and Regent
+Street.”
+
+“What time!” asked the other.
+
+“Six o'clock,” said the first man. “The chap who takes the money must
+carry a copy of the Westminster Gazette in his hand.”
+
+“Oh, then it's a plant,” said the other with conviction.
+
+The other laughed.
+
+“She won't work any plants. I bet she's scared out of her life.”
+
+The second man bit his nails and looked up and down the road,
+apprehensively.
+
+“It's come to something,” he said bitterly; “we went out to make our
+thousands and we've come down to 'chanting' for 20 pounds.”
+
+“It's the luck,” said the other philosophically, “and I haven't done
+with her by any means. Besides we've still got a chance of pulling of
+the big thing, Harry. I reckon she's good for a hundred or two, anyway.”
+
+At six o'clock on the following afternoon, a man dressed in a dark
+overcoat, with a soft felt hat pulled down over his eyes stood
+nonchalantly by the curb near where the buses stop at Regent Street
+slapping his hand gently with a folded copy of the Westminster Gazette.
+
+That none should mistake his Liberal reading, he stood as near as
+possible to a street lamp and so arranged himself and his attitude that
+the minimum of light should fall upon his face and the maximum upon
+that respectable organ of public opinion. Soon after six he saw the girl
+approaching, out of the tail of his eye, and strolled off to meet her.
+To his surprise she passed him by and he was turning to follow when an
+unfriendly hand gripped him by the arm.
+
+“Mr. Fisher, I believe,” said a pleasant voice.
+
+“What do you mean?” said the man, struggling backward.
+
+“Are you going quietly!” asked the pleasant Superintendent Mansus, “or
+shall I take my stick to you'?”
+
+Mr. Fisher thought awhile.
+
+“It's a cop,” he confessed, and allowed himself to be hustled into the
+waiting cab.
+
+He made his appearance in T. X.'s office and that urbane gentleman
+greeted him as a friend.
+
+“And how's Mr. Fisher!” he asked; “I suppose you are Mr. Fisher still
+and not Mr. Harry Gilcott, or Mr. George Porten.”
+
+Fisher smiled his old, deferential, deprecating smile.
+
+“You will always have your joke, sir. I suppose the young lady gave me
+away.”
+
+“You gave yourself away, my poor Fisher,” said T. X., and put a strip
+of paper before him; “you may disguise your hand, and in your extreme
+modesty pretend to an ignorance of the British language, which is
+not creditable to your many attainments, but what you must be awfully
+careful in doing in future when you write such epistles,” he said, “is
+to wash your hands.”
+
+“Wash my hands!” repeated the puzzled Fisher.
+
+T. X. nodded.
+
+“You see you left a little thumb print, and we are rather whales on
+thumb prints at Scotland Yard, Fisher.”
+
+“I see. What is the charge now, sir!”
+
+“I shall make no charge against you except the conventional one of being
+a convict under license and failing to report.”
+
+Fisher heaved a sigh.
+
+“That'll only mean twelve months. Are you going to charge me with this
+business?” he nodded to the paper.
+
+T. X. shook his head.
+
+“I bear you no ill-will although you tried to frighten Miss Bartholomew.
+Oh yes, I know it is Miss Bartholomew, and have known all the time. The
+lady is there for a reason which is no business of yours or of mine.
+I shall not charge you with attempt to blackmail and in reward for my
+leniency I hope you are going to tell me all you know about the Kara
+murder. You wouldn't like me to charge you with that, would you by any
+chance!”
+
+Fisher drew a long breath.
+
+“No, sir, but if you did I could prove my innocence,” he said earnestly.
+“I spent the whole of the evening in the kitchen.”
+
+“Except a quarter of an hour,” said T. X.
+
+The man nodded.
+
+“That's true, sir, I went out to see a pal of mine.”
+
+“The man who is in this!” asked T. X.
+
+Fisher hesitated.
+
+“Yes, sir. He was with me in this but there was nothing wrong about the
+business--as far as we went. I don't mind admitting that I was planning
+a Big Thing. I'm not going to blow on it, if it's going to get me into
+trouble, but if you'll promise me that it won't, I'll tell you the whole
+story.”
+
+“Against whom was this coup of yours planned?”
+
+“Against Mr. Kara, sir,” said Fisher.
+
+“Go on with your story,” nodded T. X.
+
+The story was a short and commonplace one. Fisher had met a man who knew
+another man who was either a Turk or an Albanian. They had learnt that
+Kara was in the habit of keeping large sums of money in the house and
+they had planned to rob him. That was the story in a nutshell. Somewhere
+the plan miscarried. It was when he came to the incidents that occurred
+on the night of the murder that T. X. followed him with the greatest
+interest.
+
+“The old gentleman came in,” said Fisher, “and I saw him up to the
+room. I heard him coming out and I went up and spoke to him while he was
+having a chat with Mr. Kara at the open door.”
+
+“Did you hear Mr. Kara speak?”
+
+“I fancy I did, sir,” said Fisher; “anyway the old gentleman was quite
+pleased with himself.”
+
+“Why do you say 'old gentleman'!” asked T. X.; “he was not an old man.”
+
+“Not exactly, sir,” said Fisher, “but he had a sort of fussy irritable
+way that old gentlemen sometimes have and I somehow got it fixed in my
+mind that he was old. As a matter of fact, he was about forty-five, he
+may have been fifty.”
+
+“You have told me all this before. Was there anything peculiar about
+him!”
+
+Fisher hesitated.
+
+“Nothing, sir, except the fact that one of his arms was a game one.”
+
+“Meaning that it was--”
+
+“Meaning that it was an artificial one, sir, so far as I can make out.”
+
+“Was it his right or his left arm that was game!” interrupted T. X.
+
+“His left arm, sir.”
+
+“You're sure?”
+
+“I'd swear to it, sir.”
+
+“Very well, go on.”
+
+“He came downstairs and went out and I never saw him again. When you
+came and the murder was discovered and knowing as I did that I had my
+own scheme on and that one of your splits might pinch me, I got a bit
+rattled. I went downstairs to the hall and the first thing I saw lying
+on the table was a letter. It was addressed to me.”
+
+He paused and T. X. nodded.
+
+“Go on,” he said again.
+
+“I couldn't understand how it came to be there, but as I'd been in the
+kitchen most of the evening except when I was seeing my pal outside to
+tell him the job was off for that night, it might have been there before
+you came. I opened the letter. There were only a few words on it and I
+can tell you those few words made my heart jump up into my mouth, and
+made me go cold all over.”
+
+“What were they!” asked T. X.
+
+“I shall not forget them, sir. They're sort of permanently fixed in my
+brain,” said the man earnestly; “the note started with just the figures
+'A. C. 274.'”
+
+“What was that!” asked T. X.
+
+“My convict number when I was in Dartmoor Prison, sir.”
+
+“What did the note say?”
+
+“'Get out of here quick'--I don't know who had put it there, but I'd
+evidently been spotted and I was taking no chances. That's the whole
+story from beginning to end. I accidentally happened to meet the young
+lady, Miss Holland--Miss Bartholomew as she is--and followed her to her
+house in Portman Place. That was the night you were there.”
+
+T. X. found himself to his intense annoyance going very red.
+
+“And you know no more?” he asked.
+
+“No more, sir--and if I may be struck dead--”
+
+“Keep all that sabbath talk for the chaplain,” commended T. X., and they
+took away Mr. Fisher, not an especially dissatisfied man.
+
+That night T. X. interviewed his prisoner at Cannon Row police station
+and made a few more enquiries.
+
+“There is one thing I would like to ask you,” said the girl when he met
+her next morning in Green Park.
+
+“If you were going to ask whether I made enquiries as to where your
+habitation was,” he warned her, “I beg of you to refrain.”
+
+She was looking very beautiful that morning, he thought. The keen air
+had brought a colour to her face and lent a spring to her gait, and, as
+she strode along by his side with the free and careless swing of youth,
+she was an epitome of the life which even now was budding on every tree
+in the park.
+
+“Your father is back in town, by the way,” he said, “and he is most
+anxious to see you.”
+
+She made a little grimace.
+
+“I hope you haven't been round talking to father about me.”
+
+“Of course I have,” he said helplessly; “I have also had all the
+reporters up from Fleet Street and given them a full description of your
+escapades.”
+
+She looked round at him with laughter in her eyes.
+
+“You have all the manners of an early Christian martyr,” she said. “Poor
+soul! Would you like to be thrown to the lions?”
+
+“I should prefer being thrown to the demnition ducks and drakes,” he
+said moodily.
+
+“You're such a miserable man,” she chided him, “and yet you have
+everything to make life worth living.”
+
+“Ha, ha!” said T. X.
+
+“You have, of course you have! You have a splendid position. Everybody
+looks up to you and talks about you. You have got a wife and family who
+adore you--”
+
+He stopped and looked at her as though she were some strange insect.
+
+“I have a how much?” he asked credulously.
+
+“Aren't you married?” she asked innocently.
+
+He made a strange noise in his throat.
+
+“Do you know I have always thought of you as married,” she went on; “I
+often picture you in your domestic circle reading to the children from
+the Daily Megaphone those awfully interesting stories about Little
+Willie Waterbug.”
+
+He held on to the railings for support.
+
+“May we sit down?” he asked faintly.
+
+She sat by his side, half turned to him, demure and wholly adorable.
+
+“Of course you are right in one respect,” he said at last, “but you're
+altogether wrong about the children.”
+
+“Are you married!” she demanded with no evidence of amusement.
+
+“Didn't you know?” he asked.
+
+She swallowed something.
+
+“Of course it's no business of mine and I'm sure I hope you are very
+happy.”
+
+“Perfectly happy,” said T. X. complacently. “You must come out and see
+me one Saturday afternoon when I am digging the potatoes. I am a perfect
+devil when they let me loose in the vegetable garden.”
+
+“Shall we go on?” she said.
+
+He could have sworn there were tears in her eyes and manlike he thought
+she was vexed with him at his fooling.
+
+“I haven't made you cross, have I?” he asked.
+
+“Oh no,” she replied.
+
+“I mean you don't believe all this rot about my being married and that
+sort of thing?”
+
+“I'm not interested,” she said, with a shrug of her shoulders, “not very
+much. You've been very kind to me and I should be an awful boor if I
+wasn't grateful. Of course, I don't care whether you're married or not,
+it's nothing to do with me, is it?”
+
+“Naturally it isn't,” he replied. “I suppose you aren't married by any
+chance?”
+
+“Married,” she repeated bitterly; “why, you will make my fourth!”
+
+She had hardy got the words out of her mouth before she realized her
+terrible error. A second later she was in his arms and he was kissing
+her to the scandal of one aged park keeper, one small and dirty-faced
+little boy and a moulting duck who seemed to sneer at the proceedings
+which he watched through a yellow and malignant eye.
+
+“Belinda Mary,” said T. X. at parting, “you have got to give up your
+little country establishment, wherever it may be and come back to the
+discomforts of Portman Place. Oh, I know you can't come back yet. That
+'somebody' is there, and I can pretty well guess who it is.”
+
+“Who?” she challenged.
+
+“I rather fancy your mother has come back,” he suggested.
+
+A look of scorn dawned into her pretty face.
+
+“Good lord, Tommy!” she said in disgust, “you don't think I should keep
+mother in the suburbs without her telling the world all about it!”
+
+“You're an undutiful little beggar,” he said.
+
+They had reached the Horse Guards at Whitehall and he was saying
+good-bye to her.
+
+“If it comes to a matter of duty,” she answered, “perhaps you will do
+your duty and hold up the traffic for me and let me cross this road.”
+
+“My dear girl,” he protested, “hold up the traffic?”
+
+“Of course,” she said indignantly, “you're a policeman.”
+
+“Only when I am in uniform,” he said hastily, and piloted her across the
+road.
+
+It was a new man who returned to the gloomy office in Whitehall. A man
+with a heart that swelled and throbbed with the pride and joy of life's
+most precious possession.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+
+T. X. sat at his desk, his chin in his hands, his mind remarkably busy.
+Grave as the matter was which he was considering, he rose with alacrity
+to meet the smiling girl who was ushered through the door by Mansus,
+preternaturally solemn and mysterious.
+
+She was radiant that day. Her eyes were sparkling with an unusual
+brightness.
+
+“I've got the most wonderful thing to tell you,” she said, “and I can't
+tell you.”
+
+“That's a very good beginning,” said T. X., taking her muff from her
+hand.
+
+“Oh, but it's really wonderful,” she cried eagerly, “more wonderful than
+anything you have ever heard about.”
+
+“We are interested,” said T. X. blandly.
+
+“No, no, you mustn't make fun,” she begged, “I can't tell you now, but
+it is something that will make you simply--” she was at a loss for a
+simile.
+
+“Jump out of my skin?” suggested T. X.
+
+“I shall astonish you,” she nodded her head solemnly.
+
+“I take a lot of astonishing, I warn you,” he smiled; “to know you is to
+exhaust one's capacity for surprise.”
+
+“That can be either very, very nice or very, very nasty,” she said
+cautiously.
+
+“But accept it as being very, very nice,” he laughed. “Now come, out
+with this tale of yours.”
+
+She shook her head very vigorously.
+
+“I can't possibly tell you anything,” she said.
+
+“Then why the dickens do you begin telling anything for?” he complained,
+not without reason.
+
+“Because I just want you to know that I do know something.”
+
+“Oh, Lord!” he groaned. “Of course you know everything. Belinda Mary,
+you're really the most wonderful child.”
+
+He sat on the edge of her arm-chair and laid his hand on her shoulder.
+
+“And you've come to take me out to lunch!”
+
+“What were you worrying about when I came in?” she asked.
+
+He made a little gesture as if to dismiss the subject.
+
+“Nothing very much. You've heard me speak of John Lexman?”
+
+She bent her head.
+
+“Lexman's the writer of a great many mystery stories, but you've
+probably read his books.”
+
+She nodded again, and again T. X. noticed the suppressed eagerness in
+her eyes.
+
+“You're not ill or sickening for anything, are you?” he asked anxiously;
+“measles, or mumps or something?”
+
+“Don't be silly,” she said; “go on and tell me something about Mr.
+Lexman.”
+
+“He's going to America,” said T. X., “and before he goes he wants to
+give a little lecture.”
+
+“A lecture?”
+
+“It sounds rum, doesn't it, but that's just what he wants to do.”
+
+“Why is he doing it!” she asked.
+
+T. X. made a gesture of despair.
+
+“That is one of the mysteries which may never be revealed to me,
+except--” he pursed his lips and looked thoughtfully at the girl. “There
+are times,” he said, “when there is a great struggle going on inside
+a man between all the human and better part of him and the baser
+professional part of him. One side of me wants to hear this lecture of
+John Lexman's very much, the other shrinks from the ordeal.”
+
+“Let us talk it over at lunch,” she said practically, and carried him
+off.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+One would not readily associate the party of top-booted sewermen who
+descend nightly to the subterranean passages of London with the stout
+viceconsul at Durazzo. Yet it was one unimaginative man who lived in
+Lambeth and had no knowledge that there was such a place as Durazzo who
+was responsible for bringing this comfortable official out of his bed in
+the early hours of the morning causing him--albeit reluctantly and with
+violent and insubordinate language--to conduct certain investigations in
+the crowded bazaars.
+
+At first he was unsuccessful because there were many Hussein Effendis
+in Durazzo. He sent an invitation to the American Consul to come over to
+tiffin and help him.
+
+“Why the dickens the Foreign Office should suddenly be interested in
+Hussein Effendi, I cannot for the life of me understand.”
+
+“The Foreign Department has to be interested in something, you know,”
+ said the genial American. “I receive some of the quaintest requests
+from Washington; I rather fancy they only wire you to find if they are
+there.”
+
+“Why are you doing this!”
+
+“I've seen Hakaat Bey,” said the English official. “I wonder what
+this fellow has been doing? There is probably a wigging for me in the
+offing.”
+
+At about the same time the sewerman in the bosom of his own family was
+taking loud and noisy sips from a big mug of tea.
+
+“Don't you be surprised,” he said to his admiring better half, “if I
+have to go up to the Old Bailey to give evidence.”
+
+“Lord! Joe!” she said with interest, “what has happened!”
+
+The sewer man filled his pipe and told the story with a wealth of
+rambling detail. He gave particulars of the hour he had descended the
+Victoria Street shaft, of what Bill Morgan had said to him as they were
+going down, of what he had said to Harry Carter as they splashed along
+the low-roofed tunnel, of how he had a funny feeling that he was going
+to make a discovery, and so on and so forth until he reached his long
+delayed climax.
+
+T. X. waited up very late that night and at twelve o'clock his patience
+was rewarded, for the Foreign Office messenger brought a telegram to
+him. It was addressed to the Chief Secretary and ran:
+
+“No. 847. Yours 63952 of yesterday's date. Begins. Hussein Effendi a
+prosperous merchant of this city left for Italy to place his daughter in
+convent Marie Theressa, Florence Hussein being Christian. He goes on to
+Paris. Apply Ralli Theokritis et Cie., Rue de l'Opera. Ends.”
+
+Half an hour later T. X. had a telephone connection through to Paris
+and was instructing the British police agent in that city. He received a
+further telephone report from Paris the next morning and one which
+gave him infinite satisfaction. Very slowly but surely he was gathering
+together the pieces of this baffling mystery and was fitting them
+together. Hussein Effendi would probably supply the last missing
+segments.
+
+At eight o'clock that night the door opened and the man who represented
+T. X. in Paris came in carrying a travelling ulster on his arm. T.
+X. gave him a nod and then, as the newcomer stood with the door open,
+obviously waiting for somebody to follow him, he said,
+
+“Show him in--I will see him alone.”
+
+There walked into his office, a tall man wearing a frock coat and a red
+fez. He was a man from fifty-five to sixty, powerfully built, with a
+grave dark face and a thin fringe of white beard. He salaamed as he
+entered.
+
+“You speak French, I believe,” said T. X. presently.
+
+The other bowed.
+
+“My agent has explained to you,” said T. X. in French, “that I desire
+some information for the purpose of clearing up a crime which has
+been committed in this country. I have given you my assurance, if that
+assurance was necessary, that you would come to no harm as a result of
+anything you might tell me.”
+
+“That I understand, Effendi,” said the tall Turk; “the Americans and the
+English have always been good friends of mine and I have been frequently
+in London. Therefore, I shall be very pleased to be of any help to you.”
+
+T. X. walked to a closed bookcase on one side of the room, unlocked it,
+took out an object wrapped in white tissue paper. He laid this on the
+table, the Turk watching the proceedings with an impassive face. Very
+slowly the Commissioner unrolled the little bundle and revealed at
+last a long, slim knife, rusted and stained, with a hilt, which in its
+untarnished days had evidently been of chased silver. He lifted the
+dagger from the table and handed it to the Turk.
+
+“This is yours, I believe,” he said softly.
+
+The man turned it over, stepping nearer the table that he might secure
+the advantage of a better light. He examined the blade near the hilt and
+handed the weapon back to T. X.
+
+“That is my knife,” he said.
+
+T. X. smiled.
+
+“You understand, of course, that I saw 'Hussein Effendi of Durazzo'
+inscribed in Arabic near the hilt.”
+
+The Turk inclined his head.
+
+“With this weapon,” T. X. went on, speaking with slow emphasis, “a
+murder was committed in this town.”
+
+There was no sign of interest or astonishment, or indeed of any emotion
+whatever.
+
+“It is the will of God,” he said calmly; “these things happen even in a
+great city like London.”
+
+“It was your knife,” suggested T. X.
+
+“But my hand was in Durazzo, Effendi,” said the Turk.
+
+He looked at the knife again.
+
+“So the Black Roman is dead, Effendi.”
+
+“The Black Roman?” asked T. X., a little puzzled.
+
+“The Greek they call Kara,” said the Turk; “he was a very wicked man.”
+
+T. X. was up on his feet now, leaning across the table and looking at
+the other with narrowed eyes.
+
+“How did you know it was Kara?” he asked quickly.
+
+The Turk shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“Who else could it be?” he said; “are not your newspapers filled with
+the story?”
+
+T. X. sat back again, disappointed and a little annoyed with himself.
+
+“That is true, Hussein Effendi, but I did not think you read the
+papers.”
+
+“Neither do I, master,” replied the other coolly, “nor did I know that
+Kara had been killed until I saw this knife. How came this in your
+possession!”
+
+“It was found in a rain sewer,” said T. X., “into which the murderer had
+apparently dropped it. But if you have not read the newspapers, Effendi,
+then you admit that you know who committed this murder.”
+
+The Turk raised his hands slowly to a level with his shoulders.
+
+“Though I am a Christian,” he said, “there are many wise sayings of my
+father's religion which I remember. And one of these, Effendi, was, 'the
+wicked must die in the habitations of the just, by the weapons of the
+worthy shall the wicked perish.' Your Excellency, I am a worthy man,
+for never have I done a dishonest thing in my life. I have traded fairly
+with Greeks, with Italians, have with Frenchmen and with Englishmen,
+also with Jews. I have never sought to rob them nor to hurt them. If I
+have killed men, God knows it was not because I desired their death, but
+because their lives were dangerous to me and to mine. Ask the blade all
+your questions and see what answer it gives. Until it speaks I am as
+dumb as the blade, for it is also written that 'the soldier is the
+servant of his sword,' and also, 'the wise servant is dumb about his
+master's affairs.'”
+
+T. X. laughed helplessly.
+
+“I had hoped that you might be able to help me, hoped and feared,” he
+said; “if you cannot speak it is not my business to force you either by
+threat or by act. I am grateful to you for having come over, although
+the visit has been rather fruitless so far as I am concerned.”
+
+He smiled again and offered his hand.
+
+“Excellency,” said the old Turk soberly, “there are some things in life
+that are well left alone and there are moments when justice should be so
+blind that she does not see guilt; here is such a moment.”
+
+And this ended the interview, one on which T. X. had set very high
+hopes. His gloom carried to Portman Place, where he had arranged to meet
+Belinda Mary.
+
+“Where is Mr. Lexman going to give this famous lecture of his?” was the
+question with which she greeted him, “and, please, what is the subject?”
+
+“It is on a subject which is of supreme interest to me;” he said
+gravely; “he has called his lecture 'The Clue of the Twisted Candle.'
+There is no clearer brain being employed in the business of criminal
+detection than John Lexman's. Though he uses his genius for the
+construction of stories, were it employed in the legitimate business
+of police work, I am certain he would make a mark second to none in
+the world. He is determined on giving this lecture and he has issued a
+number of invitations. These include the Chiefs of the Secret Police of
+nearly all the civilized countries of the world. O'Grady is on his way
+from America, he wirelessed me this morning to that effect. Even the
+Chief of the Russian police has accepted the invitation, because, as you
+know, this murder has excited a great deal of interest in police circles
+everywhere. John Lexman is not only going to deliver this lecture,” he
+said slowly, “but he is going to tell us who committed the murder and
+how it was committed.”
+
+She thought a moment.
+
+“Where will it be delivered!”
+
+“I don't know,” he said in astonishment; “does that matter?”
+
+“It matters a great deal,” she said emphatically, “especially if I want
+it delivered in a certain place. Would you induce Mr. Lexman to lecture
+at my house?”
+
+“At Portman Place!” he asked.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“No, I have a house of my own. A furnished house I have rented at
+Blackheath. Will you induce Mr. Lexman to give the lecture there?”
+
+“But why?” he asked.
+
+“Please don't ask questions,” she pleaded, “do this for me, Tommy.”
+
+He saw she was in earnest.
+
+“I'll write to old Lexman this afternoon,” he promised.
+
+John Lexman telephoned his reply.
+
+“I should prefer somewhere out of London,” he said, “and since Miss
+Bartholomew has some interest in the matter, may I extend my invitation
+to her? I promise she shall not be any more shocked than a good woman
+need be.”
+
+And so it came about that the name of Belinda Mary Bartholomew was added
+to the selected list of police chiefs, who were making for London at
+that moment to hear from the man who had guaranteed the solution of
+the story of Kara and his killing; the unravelment of the mystery which
+surrounded his death, and the significance of the twisted candles, which
+at that moment were reposing in the Black Museum at Scotland Yard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+The room was a big one and most of the furniture had been cleared out
+to admit the guests who had come from the ends of the earth to learn the
+story of the twisted candles, and to test John Lexman's theory by their
+own.
+
+They sat around chatting cheerfully of men and crimes, of great coups
+planned and frustrated, of strange deeds committed and undetected.
+Scraps of their conversation came to Belinda Mary as she stood in the
+chintz-draped doorway which led from the drawing-room to the room she
+used as a study.
+
+“... do you remember, Sir George, the Bolbrook case! I took the man at
+Odessa....”
+
+“... the curious thing was that I found no money on the body, only a
+small gold charm set with a single emerald, so I knew it was the girl
+with the fur bonnet who had...”
+
+“... Pinot got away after putting three bullets into me, but I dragged
+myself to the window and shot him dead--it was a real good shot...!”
+
+They rose to meet her and T. X. introduced her to the men. It was at
+that moment that John Lexman was announced.
+
+He looked tired, but returned the Commissioner's greeting with a
+cheerful mien. He knew all the men present by name, as they knew him. He
+had a few sheets of notes, which he laid on the little table which had
+been placed for him, and when the introductions were finished he went to
+this and with scarcely any preliminary began.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+THE NARRATIVE OF JOHN LEXMAN
+
+“I am, as you may all know, a writer of stories which depend for their
+success upon the creation and unravelment of criminological mysteries.
+The Chief Commissioner has been good enough to tell you that my stories
+were something more than a mere seeking after sensation, and that I
+endeavoured in the course of those narratives to propound obscure but
+possible situations, and, with the ingenuity that I could command, to
+offer to those problems a solution acceptable, not only to the general
+reader, but to the police expert.
+
+“Although I did not regard my earlier work with any great seriousness
+and indeed only sought after exciting situations and incidents, I can
+see now, looking back, that underneath the work which seemed at the time
+purposeless, there was something very much like a scheme of studies.
+
+“You must forgive this egotism in me because it is necessary that
+I should make this explanation and you, who are in the main police
+officers of considerable experience and discernment, should appreciate
+the fact that as I was able to get inside the minds of the fictitious
+criminals I portrayed, so am I now able to follow the mind of the man
+who committed this murder, or if not to follow his mind, to recreate the
+psychology of the slayer of Remington Kara.
+
+“In the possession of most of you are the vital facts concerning this
+man. You know the type of man he was, you have instances of his terrible
+ruthlessness, you know that he was a blot upon God's earth, a vicious
+wicked ego, seeking the gratification of that strange blood-lust and
+pain-lust, which is to be found in so few criminals.”
+
+John Lexman went on to describe the killing of Vassalaro.
+
+“I know now how that occurred,” he said. “I had received on the previous
+Christmas eve amongst other presents, a pistol from an unknown admirer.
+That unknown admirer was Kara, who had planned this murder some three
+months ahead. He it was, who sent me the Browning, knowing as he did
+that I had never used such a weapon and that therefore I would be chary
+about using it. I might have put the pistol away in a cupboard out
+of reach and the whole of his carefully thought out plan would have
+miscarried.
+
+“But Kara was systematic in all things. Three weeks after I received the
+weapon, a clumsy attempt was made to break into my house in the middle
+of the night. It struck me at the time it was clumsy, because the
+burglar made a tremendous amount of noise and disappeared soon after
+he began his attempt, doing no more damage than to break a window in
+my dining-room. Naturally my mind went to the possibility of a further
+attempt of this kind, as my house stood on the outskirts of the village,
+and it was only natural that I should take the pistol from one of my
+boxes and put it somewhere handy. To make doubly sure, Kara came down
+the next day and heard the full story of the outrage.
+
+“He did not speak of pistols, but I remember now, though I did not
+remember at the time, that I mentioned the fact that I had a handy
+weapon. A fortnight later a second attempt was made to enter the house.
+I say an attempt, but again I do not believe that the intention was at
+all serious. The outrage was designed to keep that pistol of mine in a
+get-at-able place.
+
+“And again Kara came down to see us on the day following the burglary,
+and again I must have told him, though I have no distinct recollection
+of the fact, of what had happened the previous night. It would have been
+unnatural if I had not mentioned the fact, as it was a matter which had
+formed a subject of discussion between myself, my wife and the servants.
+
+“Then came the threatening letter, with Kara providentially at hand. On
+the night of the murder, whilst Kara was still in my house, I went out
+to find his chauffeur. Kara remained a few minutes with my wife and
+then on some excuse went into the library. There he loaded the pistol,
+placing one cartridge in the chamber, and trusting to luck that I did
+not pull the trigger until I had it pointed at my victim. Here he took
+his biggest chance, because, before sending the weapon to me, he had had
+the spring of the Browning so eased that the slightest touch set it
+off and, as you know, the pistol being automatic, the explosion of one
+cartridge, reloading and firing the next and so on, it was probably
+that a chance touch would have brought his scheme to nought--probably me
+also.
+
+“Of what happened on that night you are aware.”
+
+He went on to tell of his trial and conviction and skimmed over the life
+he led until that morning on Dartmoor.
+
+“Kara knew my innocence had been proved and his hatred for me being
+his great obsession, since I had the thing he had wanted but no longer
+wanted, let that be understood--he saw the misery he had planned for
+me and my dear wife being brought to a sudden end. He had, by the
+way, already planned and carried his plan into execution, a system of
+tormenting her.
+
+“You did not know,” he turned to T. X., “that scarcely a month passed,
+but some disreputable villain called at her flat, with a story that he
+had been released from Portland or Wormwood Scrubbs that morning and
+that he had seen me. The story each messenger brought was one sufficient
+to break the heart of any but the bravest woman. It was a story of
+ill-treatment by brutal officials, of my illness, of my madness, of
+everything calculated to harrow the feelings of a tender-hearted and
+faithful wife.
+
+“That was Kara's scheme. Not to hurt with the whip or with the knife,
+but to cut deep at the heart with his evil tongue, to cut to the raw
+places of the mind. When he found that I was to be released,--he may
+have guessed, or he may have discovered by some underhand method; that a
+pardon was about to be signed,--he conceived his great plan. He had less
+than two days to execute it.
+
+“Through one of his agents he discovered a warder who had been in some
+trouble with the authorities, a man who was avaricious and was even then
+on the brink of being discharged from the service for trafficking with
+prisoners. The bribe he offered this man was a heavy one and the warder
+accepted.
+
+“Kara had purchased a new monoplane and as you know he was an excellent
+aviator. With this new machine he flew to Devon and arrived at dawn in
+one of the unfrequented parts of the moor.
+
+“The story of my own escape needs no telling. My narrative really begins
+from the moment I put my foot upon the deck of the Mpret. The first
+person I asked to see was, naturally, my wife. Kara, however, insisted
+on my going to the cabin he had prepared and changing my clothes, and
+until then I did not realise I was still in my convict's garb. A
+clean change was waiting for me, and the luxury of soft shirts and
+well-fitting garments after the prison uniform I cannot describe.
+
+“After I was dressed I was taken by the Greek steward to the larger
+stateroom and there I found my darling waiting for me.”
+
+His voice sank almost to a whisper, and it was a minute or two before he
+had mastered his emotions.
+
+“She had been suspicious of Kara, but he had been very insistent. He had
+detailed the plans and shown her the monoplane, but even then she would
+not trust herself on board, and she had been waiting in a motor-boat,
+moving parallel with the yacht, until she saw the landing and realized,
+as she thought, that Kara was not playing her false. The motor-boat had
+been hired by Kara and the two men inside were probably as well-bribed
+as the warder.
+
+“The joy of freedom can only be known to those who have suffered the
+horrors of restraint. That is a trite enough statement, but when one is
+describing elemental things there is no room for subtlety. The voyage
+was a fairly eventless one. We saw very little of Kara, who did not
+intrude himself upon us, and our main excitement lay in the apprehension
+that we should be held up by a British destroyer or, that when we
+reached Gibraltar, we should be searched by the Brit's authorities. Kara
+had foreseen that possibility and had taken in enough coal to last him
+for the run.
+
+“We had a fairly stormy passage in the Mediterranean, but after that
+nothing happened until we arrived at Durazzo. We had to go ashore in
+disguise, because Kara told us that the English Consul might see us and
+make some trouble. We wore Turkish dresses, Grace heavily veiled and I
+wearing a greasy old kaftan which, with my somewhat emaciated face and
+my unshaven appearance, passed me without comment.
+
+“Kara's home was and is about eighteen miles from Durazzo. It is not on
+the main road, but it is reached by following one of the rocky mountain
+paths which wind and twist among the hills to the south-east of the
+town. The country is wild and mainly uncultivated. We had to pass
+through swamps and skirt huge lagoons as we mounted higher and higher
+from terrace to terrace and came to the roads which crossed the
+mountains.
+
+“Kara's, palace, you could call it no less, is really built within sight
+of the sea. It is on the Acroceraunian Peninsula near Cape Linguetta.
+Hereabouts the country is more populated and better cultivated. We
+passed great slopes entirely covered with mulberry and olive trees,
+whilst in the valleys there were fields of maize and corn. The palazzo
+stands on a lofty plateau. It is approached by two paths, which can be
+and have been well defended in the past against the Sultan's troops
+or against the bands which have been raised by rival villages with the
+object of storming and plundering this stronghold.
+
+“The Skipetars, a blood-thirsty crowd without pity or remorse, were
+faithful enough to their chief, as Kara was. He paid them so well that
+it was not profitable to rob him; moreover he kept their own turbulent
+elements fully occupied with the little raids which he or his agents
+organized from time to time. The palazzo was built rather in the Moorish
+than in the Turkish style.
+
+“It was a sort of Eastern type to which was grafted an Italian
+architecture--a house of white-columned courts, of big paved yards,
+fountains and cool, dark rooms.
+
+“When I passed through the gates I realized for the first time something
+of Kara's importance. There were a score of servants, all Eastern,
+perfectly trained, silent and obsequious. He led us to his own room.
+
+“It was a big apartment with divans running round the wall, the most
+ornate French drawing room suite and an enormous Persian carpet, one of
+the finest of the kind that has ever been turned out of Shiraz. Here,
+let me say, that throughout the trip his attitude to me had been
+perfectly friendly and towards Grace all that I could ask of my best
+friend, considerate and tactful.
+
+“'We had hardly reached his room before he said to me with that bonhomie
+which he had observed throughout the trip, 'You would like to see your
+room?'
+
+“I expressed a wish to that effect. He clapped his hands and a big
+Albanian servant came through the curtained doorway, made the usual
+salaam, and Kara spoke to him a few words in a language which I presume
+was Turkish.
+
+“'He will show you the way,' said Kara with his most genial smile.
+
+“I followed the servant through the curtains which had hardly fallen
+behind me before I was seized by four men, flung violently on the
+ground, a filthy tarbosch was thrust into my mouth and before I knew
+what was happening I was bound hand and foot.
+
+“As I realised the gross treachery of the man, my first frantic thoughts
+were of Grace and her safety. I struggled with the strength of three
+men, but they were too many for me and I was dragged along the passage,
+a door was opened and I was flung into a bare room. I must have been
+lying on the floor for half an hour when they came for me, this time
+accompanied by a middle-aged man named Savolio, who was either an
+Italian or a Greek.
+
+“He spoke English fairly well and he made it clear to me that I had to
+behave myself. I was led back to the room from whence I had come and
+found Kara sitting in one of those big armchairs which he affected,
+smoking a cigarette. Confronting him, still in her Turkish dress, was
+poor Grace. She was not bound I was pleased to see, but when on
+my entrance she rose and made as if to come towards me, she was
+unceremoniously thrown back by the guardian who stood at her side.
+
+“'Mr. John Lexman,' drawled Kara, 'you are at the beginning of a great
+disillusionment. I have a few things to tell you which will make you
+feel rather uncomfortable.' It was then that I heard for the first time
+that my pardon had been signed and my innocence discovered.
+
+“'Having taken a great deal of trouble to get you in prison,' said Kara,
+'it isn't likely that I'm going to allow all my plans to be undone, and
+my plan is to make you both extremely uncomfortable.'
+
+“He did not raise his voice, speaking still in the same conversational
+tone, suave and half amused.
+
+“'I hate you for two things,' he said, and ticked them off on his
+fingers: 'the first is that you took the woman that I wanted. To a man
+of my temperament that is an unpardonable crime. I have never wanted
+women either as friends or as amusement. I am one of the few people in
+the world who are self-sufficient. It happened that I wanted your wife
+and she rejected me because apparently she preferred you.'
+
+“He looked at me quizzically.
+
+“'You are thinking at this moment,' he went on slowly, 'that I want her
+now, and that it is part of my revenge that I shall put her straight in
+my harem. Nothing is farther from my desires or my thoughts. The Black
+Roman is not satisfied with the leavings of such poor trash as you. I
+hate you both equally and for both of you there is waiting an experience
+more terrible than even your elastic imagination can conjure. You
+understand what that means!' he asked me still retaining his calm.
+
+“I did not reply. I dared not look at Grace, to whom he turned.
+
+“'I believe you love your husband, my friend,' he said; 'your love will
+be put to a very severe test. You shall see him the mere wreckage of the
+man he is. You shall see him brutalized below the level of the cattle
+in the field. I will give you both no joys, no ease of mind. From this
+moment you are slaves, and worse than slaves.'
+
+“He clapped his hands. The interview was ended and from that moment I
+only saw Grace once.”
+
+John Lexman stopped and buried his face in his hands.
+
+“They took me to an underground dungeon cut in the solid rock. In many
+ways it resembled the dungeon of the Chateau of Chillon, in that its
+only window looked out upon a wild, storm-swept lake and its floor was
+jagged rock. I have called it underground, as indeed it was on that
+side, for the palazzo was built upon a steep slope running down from the
+spur of the hills.
+
+“They chained me by the legs and left me to my own devices. Once a day
+they gave me a little goat flesh and a pannikin of water and once a week
+Kara would come in and outside the radius of my chain he would open a
+little camp stool and sitting down smoke his cigarette and talk. My
+God! the things that man said! The things he described! The horrors he
+related! And always it was Grace who was the centre of his description.
+And he would relate the stories he was telling to her about myself. I
+cannot describe them. They are beyond repetition.”
+
+John Lexman shuddered and closed his eyes.
+
+“That was his weapon. He did not confront me with the torture of my
+darling, he did not bring tangible evidence of her suffering--he just
+sat and talked, describing with a remarkable clarity of language which
+seemed incredible in a foreigner, the 'amusements' which he himself had
+witnessed.
+
+“I thought I should go mad. Twice I sprang at him and twice the chain
+about my legs threw me headlong on that cruel floor. Once he brought the
+jailer in to whip me, but I took the whipping with such phlegm that it
+gave him no satisfaction. I told you I had seen Grace only once and this
+is how it happened.
+
+“It was after the flogging, and Kara, who was a veritable demon in his
+rage, planned to have his revenge for my indifference. They brought
+Grace out upon a boat and rowed the boat to where I could see it from my
+window. There the whip which had been applied to me was applied to her.
+I can't tell you any more about that,” he said brokenly, “but I wish,
+you don't know how fervently, that I had broken down and given the dog
+the satisfaction he wanted. My God! It was horrible!
+
+“When the winter came they used to take me out with chains on my legs
+to gather in wood from the forest. There was no reason why I should be
+given this work, but the truth was, as I discovered from Salvolio, that
+Kara thought my dungeon was too warm. It was sheltered from the winds
+by the hill behind and even on the coldest days and nights it was not
+unbearable. Then Kara went away for some time. I think he must have gone
+to England, and he came back in a white fury. One of his big plans had
+gone wrong and the mental torture he inflicted upon me was more acute
+than ever.
+
+“In the old days he used to come once a week; now he came almost every
+day. He usually arrived in the afternoon and I was surprised one night
+to be awakened from my sleep to see him standing at the door, a lantern
+in his hand, his inevitable cigarette in his mouth. He always wore the
+Albanian costume when he was in the country, those white kilted skirts
+and zouave jackets which the hillsmen affect and, if anything, it added
+to his demoniacal appearance. He put down the lantern and leant against
+the wall.
+
+“'I'm afraid that wife of yours is breaking up, Lexman,' he drawled;
+'she isn't the good, stout, English stuff that I thought she was.'
+
+“I made no reply. I had found by bitter experience that if I intruded
+into the conversation, I should only suffer the more.
+
+“'I have sent down to Durazzo to get a doctor,' he went on; 'naturally
+having taken all this trouble I don't want to lose you by death. She
+is breaking up,' he repeated with relish and yet with an undertone of
+annoyance in his voice; 'she asked for you three times this morning.'
+
+“I kept myself under control as I had never expected that a man so
+desperately circumstanced could do.
+
+“'Kara,' I said as quietly as I could, 'what has she done that she
+should deserve this hell in which she has lived?'
+
+“He sent out a long ring of smoke and watched its progress across the
+dungeon.
+
+“'What has she done?' he said, keeping his eye on the ring--I shall
+always remember every look, every gesture, and every intonation of his
+voice. 'Why, she has done all that a woman can do for a man like me. She
+has made me feel little. Until I had a rebuff from her, I had all the
+world at my feet, Lexman. I did as I liked. If I crooked my little
+finger, people ran after me and that one experience with her has broken
+me. Oh, don't think,' he went on quickly, 'that I am broken in love. I
+never loved her very much, it was just a passing passion, but she killed
+my self-confidence. After then, whenever I came to a crucial moment
+in my affairs, when the big manner, the big certainty was absolutely
+necessary for me to carry my way, whenever I was most confident of
+myself and my ability and my scheme, a vision of this damned girl rose
+and I felt that momentary weakening, that memory of defeat, which made
+all the difference between success and failure.
+
+“'I hated her and I hate her still,' he said with vehemence; 'if
+she dies I shall hate her more because she will remain everlastingly
+unbroken to menace my thoughts and spoil my schemes through all
+eternity.'
+
+“He leant forward, his elbows on his knees, his clenched fist under his
+chin--how well I can see him!--and stared at me.
+
+“'I could have been king here in this land,' he said, waving his hand
+toward the interior, 'I could have bribed and shot my way to the throne
+of Albania. Don't you realize what that means to a man like me? There is
+still a chance and if I could keep your wife alive, if I could see her
+broken in reason and in health, a poor, skeleton, gibbering thing that
+knelt at my feet when I came near her I should recover the mastery of
+myself. Believe me,' he said, nodding his head, 'your wife will have the
+best medical advice that it is possible to obtain.'
+
+“Kara went out and I did not see him again for a very long time. He sent
+word, just a scrawled note in the morning, to say my wife had died.”
+
+John Lexman rose up from his seat, and paced the apartment, his head
+upon his breast.
+
+“From that moment,” he said, “I lived only for one thing, to punish
+Remington Kara. And gentlemen, I punished him.”
+
+He stood in the centre of the room and thumped his broad chest with his
+clenched hand.
+
+“I killed Remington Kara,” he said, and there was a little gasp of
+astonishment from every man present save one. That one was T. X.
+Meredith, who had known all the time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+After a while Lexman resumed his story.
+
+“I told you that there was a man at the palazzo named Salvolio. Salvolio
+was a man who had been undergoing a life sentence in one of the prisons
+of southern Italy. In some mysterious fashion he escaped and got across
+the Adriatic in a small boat. How Kara found him I don't know. Salvolio
+was a very uncommunicative person. I was never certain whether he was
+a Greek or an Italian. All that I am sure about is that he was the most
+unmitigated villain next to his master that I have ever met.
+
+“He was a quick man with his knife and I have seen him kill one of the
+guards whom he had thought was favouring me in the matter of diet with
+less compunction than you would kill a rat.
+
+“It was he who gave me this scar,” John Lexman pointed to his cheek.
+“In his master's absence he took upon himself the task of conducting
+a clumsy imitation of Kara's persecution. He gave me, too, the only
+glimpse I ever had of the torture poor Grace underwent. She hated dogs,
+and Kara must have come to know this and in her sleeping room--she was
+apparently better accommodated than I--he kept four fierce beasts so
+chained that they could almost reach her.
+
+“Some reference to my wife from this low brute maddened me beyond
+endurance and I sprang at him. He whipped out his knife and struck at
+me as I fell and I escaped by a miracle. He evidently had orders not to
+touch me, for he was in a great panic of mind, as he had reason to be,
+because on Kara's return he discovered the state of my face, started
+an enquiry and had Salvolio taken to the courtyard in the true eastern
+style and bastinadoed until his feet were pulp.
+
+“You may be sure the man hated me with a malignity which almost rivalled
+his employer's. After Grace's death Kara went away suddenly and I was
+left to the tender mercy of this man. Evidently he had been given a
+fairly free hand. The principal object of Kara's hate being dead,
+he took little further interest in me, or else wearied of his hobby.
+Salvolio began his persecutions by reducing my diet. Fortunately I ate
+very little. Nevertheless the supplies began to grow less and less, and
+I was beginning to feel the effects of this starvation system when there
+happened a thing which changed the whole course of my life and opened to
+me a way to freedom and to vengeance.
+
+“Salvolio did not imitate the austerity of his master and in Kara's
+absence was in the habit of having little orgies of his own. He would
+bring up dancing girls from Durazzo for his amusement and invite
+prominent men in the neighbourhood to his feasts and entertainments, for
+he was absolutely lord of the palazzo when Kara was away and could do
+pretty well as he liked. On this particular night the festivities had
+been more than usually prolonged, for as near as I could judge by the
+day-light which was creeping in through my window it was about four
+o'clock in the morning when the big steel-sheeted door was opened and
+Salvolio came in, more than a little drunk. He brought with him, as I
+judged, one of his dancing girls, who apparently was privileged to see
+the sights of the palace.
+
+“For a long time he stood in the doorway talking incoherently in a
+language which I think must have been Turkish, for I caught one or two
+words.
+
+“Whoever the girl was, she seemed a little frightened, I could see that,
+because she shrank back from him though his arm was about her shoulders
+and he was half supporting his weight upon her. There was fear, not only
+in the curious little glances she shot at me from time to time, but also
+in the averted face. Her story I was to learn. She was not of the class
+from whence Salvolio found the dancers who from time to time came up to
+the palace for his amusement and the amusement of his guests. She was
+the daughter of a Turkish merchant of Scutari who had been received into
+the Catholic Church.
+
+“Her father had gone down to Durazzo during the first Balkan war and
+then Salvolio had seen the girl unknown to her parent, and there had
+been some rough kind of courtship which ended in her running away on
+this very day and joining her ill-favoured lover at the palazzo. I tell
+you this because the fact had some bearing on my own fate.
+
+“As I say, the girl was frightened and made as though to go from the
+dungeon. She was probably scared both by the unkempt prisoner and by the
+drunken man at her side. He, however, could not leave without showing to
+her something of his authority. He came lurching over near where I lay,
+his long knife balanced in his hand ready for emergencies, and broke
+into a string of vituperations of the character to which I was quite
+hardened.
+
+“Then he took a flying kick at me and got home in my ribs, but again I
+experienced neither a sense of indignity nor any great hurt. Salvolio
+had treated me like this before and I had survived it. In the midst of
+the tirade, looking past him, I was a new witness to an extraordinary
+scene.
+
+“The girl stood in the open doorway, shrinking back against the door,
+looking with distress and pity at the spectacle which Salvolio's
+brutality afforded. Then suddenly there appeared beside her a tall Turk.
+He was grey-bearded and forbidding. She looked round and saw him, and
+her mouth opened to utter a cry, but with a gesture he silenced her and
+pointed to the darkness outside.
+
+“Without a word she cringed past him, her sandalled feet making no
+noise. All this time Salvolio was continuing his stream of abuse, but he
+must have seen the wonder in my eyes for he stopped and turned.
+
+“The old Turk took one stride forward, encircled his body with his left
+arm, and there they stood grotesquely like a couple who were going to
+start to waltz. The Turk was a head taller than Salvolio and, as I could
+see, a man of immense strength.
+
+“They looked at one another, face to face, Salvolio rapidly recovering
+his senses... and then the Turk gave him a gentle punch in the ribs.
+That is what it seemed like to me, but Salvolio coughed horribly, went
+limp in the other's arms and dropped with a thud to the ground. The Turk
+leant down soberly and wiped his long knife on the other's jacket before
+he put it back in the sash at his waist.
+
+“Then with a glance at me he turned to go, but stopped at the door and
+looked back thoughtfully. He said something in Turkish which I could not
+understand, then he spoke in French.
+
+“'Who are you?' he asked.
+
+“In as few words as possible I explained. He came over and looked at the
+manacle about my leg and shook his head.
+
+“'You will never be able to get that undone,' he said.
+
+“He caught hold of the chain, which was a fairly long one, bound it
+twice round his arm and steadying his arm across his thigh, he turned
+with a sudden jerk. There was a smart 'snap' as the chain parted. He
+caught me by the shoulder and pulled me to my feet. 'Put the chain
+about your waist, Effendi,' he said, and he took a revolver from his
+belt and handed it to me.
+
+“'You may need this before we get back to Durazzo,' he said. His belt
+was literally bristling with weapons--I saw three revolvers beside the
+one I possessed--and he had, evidently come prepared for trouble. We
+made our way from the dungeon into the clean-smelling world without.
+
+“It was the second time I had been in the open air for eighteen months
+and my knees were trembling under me with weakness and excitement. The
+old man shut the prison door behind us and walked on until we came up to
+the girl waiting for us by the lakeside. She was weeping softly and he
+spoke to her a few words in a low voice and her weeping ceased.
+
+“'This daughter of mine will show us the way,' he said, 'I do not know
+this part of the country--she knows it too well.'
+
+“To cut a long story short,” said Lexman, “we reached Durazzo in the
+afternoon. There was no attempt made to follow us up and neither my
+absence nor the body of Salvolio were discovered until late in the
+afternoon. You must remember that nobody but Salvolio was allowed
+into my prison and therefore nobody had the courage to make any
+investigations.
+
+“The old man got me to his house without being observed, and brought a
+brother-in-law or some relative of his to remove the anklet. The name of
+my host was Hussein Effendi.
+
+“That same night we left with a little caravan to visit some of the old
+man's relatives. He was not certain what would be the consequence of
+his act, and for safety's sake took this trip, which would enable him
+if need be to seek sanctuary with some of the wilder Turkish tribes, who
+would give him protection.
+
+“In that three months I saw Albania as it is--it was an experience never
+to be forgotten!
+
+“If there is a better man in God's world than Hiabam Hussein Effendi,
+I have yet to meet him. It was he who provided me with money to leave
+Albania. I begged from him, too, the knife with which he had killed
+Salvolio. He had discovered that Kara was in England and told me
+something of the Greek's occupation which I had not known before. I
+crossed to Italy and went on to Milan. There it was that I learnt that
+an eccentric Englishman who had arrived a few days previously on one of
+the South American boats at Genoa, was in my hotel desperately ill.
+
+“My hotel I need hardly tell you was not a very expensive one and we
+were evidently the only two Englishmen in the place. I could do no less
+than go up and see what I could do for the poor fellow who was pretty
+well gone when I saw him. I seemed to remember having seen him before
+and when looking round for some identification I discovered his name I
+readily recalled the circumstance.
+
+“It was George Gathercole, who had returned from South America. He was
+suffering from malarial fever and blood poisoning and for a week, with
+an Italian doctor, I fought as hard as any man could fight for his
+life. He was a trying patient,” John Lexman smiled suddenly at the
+recollection, “vitriolic in his language, impatient and imperious in his
+attitude to his friends. He was, for example, terribly sensitive about
+his lost arm and would not allow either the doctor or my-self to enter
+the room until he was covered to the neck, nor would he eat or drink in
+our presence. Yet he was the bravest of the brave, careless of himself
+and only fretful because he had not time to finish his new book. His
+indomitable spirit did not save him. He died on the 17th of January of
+this year. I was in Genoa at the time, having gone there at his request
+to save his belongings. When I returned he had been buried. I went
+through his papers and it was then that I conceived my idea of how I
+might approach Kara.
+
+“I found a letter from the Greek, which had been addressed to Buenos
+Ayres, to await arrival, and then I remembered in a flash, how Kara had
+told me he had sent George Gathercole to South America to report upon
+possible gold formations. I was determined to kill Kara, and determined
+to kill him in such a way that I myself would cover every trace of my
+complicity.
+
+“Even as he had planned my downfall, scheming every step and covering
+his trail, so did I plan to bring about his death that no suspicion
+should fall on me.
+
+“I knew his house. I knew something of his habits. I knew the fear in
+which he went when he was in England and away from the feudal guards who
+had surrounded him in Albania. I knew of his famous door with its steel
+latch and I was planning to circumvent all these precautions and bring
+to him not only the death he deserved, but a full knowledge of his fate
+before he died.
+
+“Gathercole had some money,--about 140 pounds--I took 100 pounds of
+this for my own use, knowing that I should have sufficient in London
+to recompense his heirs, and the remainder of the money with all such
+documents as he had, save those which identified him with Kara, I handed
+over to the British Consul.
+
+“I was not unlike the dead man. My beard had grown wild and I knew
+enough of Gathercole's eccentricities to live the part. The first step
+I took was to announce my arrival by inference. I am a fairly good
+journalist with a wide general knowledge and with this, corrected by
+reference to the necessary books which I found in the British Museum
+library, I was able to turn out a very respectable article on Patagonia.
+
+“This I sent to The Times with one of Gathercole's cards and, as you
+know, it was printed. My next step was to find suitable lodgings between
+Chelsea and Scotland Yard. I was fortunate in being able to hire a
+furnished flat, the owner of which was going to the south of France for
+three months. I paid the rent in advance and since I dropped all the
+eccentricities I had assumed to support the character of Gathercole, I
+must have impressed the owner, who took me without references.
+
+“I had several suits of new clothes made, not in London,” he smiled,
+“but in Manchester, and again I made myself as trim as possible to avoid
+after-identification. When I had got these together in my flat, I
+chose my day. In the morning I sent two trunks with most of my personal
+belongings to the Great Midland Hotel.
+
+“In the afternoon I went to Cadogan Square and hung about until I saw
+Kara drive off. It was my first view of him since I had left Albania and
+it required all my self-control to prevent me springing at him in the
+street and tearing at him with my hands.
+
+“Once he was out of sight I went to the house adopting all the style and
+all the mannerisms of poor Gathercole. My beginning was unfortunate for,
+with a shock, I recognised in the valet a fellow-convict who had
+been with me in the warder's cottage on the morning of my escape from
+Dartmoor. There was no mistaking him, and when I heard his voice I was
+certain. Would he recognise me I wondered, in spite of my beard and my
+eye-glasses?
+
+“Apparently he did not. I gave him every chance. I thrust my face into
+his and on my second visit challenged him, in the eccentric way which
+poor old Gathercole had, to test the grey of my beard. For the moment
+however, I was satisfied with my brief experiment and after a reasonable
+interval I went away, returning to my place off Victoria Street and
+waiting till the evening.
+
+“In my observation of the house, whilst I was waiting for Kara to
+depart, I had noticed that there were two distinct telephone wires
+running down to the roof. I guessed, rather than knew, that one of these
+telephones was a private wire and, knowing something of Kara's fear, I
+presumed that that wire would lead to a police office, or at any rate
+to a guardian of some kind or other. Kara had the same arrangement in
+Albania, connecting the palazzo with the gendarme posts at Alesso. This
+much Hussein told me.
+
+“That night I made a reconnaissance of the house and saw Kara's window
+was lit and at ten minutes past ten I rang the bell and I think it was
+then that I applied the test of the beard. Kara was in his room, the
+valet told me, and led the way upstairs. I had come prepared to deal
+with this valet for I had an especial reason for wishing that he should
+not be interrogated by the police. On a plain card I had written the
+number he bore in Dartmoor and had added the words, 'I know you, get out
+of here quick.'
+
+“As he turned to lead the way upstairs I flung the envelope containing
+the card on the table in the hall. In an inside pocket, as near to my
+body as I could put them, I had the two candles. How I should use them
+both I had already decided. The valet ushered me into Kara's room and
+once more I stood in the presence of the man who had killed my girl and
+blotted out all that was beautiful in life for me.”
+
+There was a breathless silence when he paused. T. X. leaned back in his
+chair, his head upon his breast, his arms folded, his eyes watching the
+other intently.
+
+The Chief Commissioner, with a heavy frown and pursed lips, sat stroking
+his moustache and looking under his shaggy eyebrows at the speaker. The
+French police officer, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, his head
+on one side, was taking in every word eagerly. The sallow-faced Russian,
+impassive of face, might have been a carved ivory mask. O'Grady,
+the American, the stump of a dead cigar between his teeth, shifted
+impatiently with every pause as though he would hurry forward the
+denouement.
+
+Presently John Lexman went on.
+
+“He slipped from the bed and came across to meet me as I closed the door
+behind me.
+
+“'Ah, Mr. Gathercole,' he said, in that silky tone of his, and held out
+his hand.
+
+“I did not speak. I just looked at him with a sort of fierce joy in my
+heart the like of which I had never before experienced.
+
+“'And then he saw in my eyes the truth and half reached for the
+telephone.
+
+“But at that moment I was on him. He was a child in my hands. All the
+bitter anguish he had brought upon me, all the hardships of starved days
+and freezing nights had strengthened and hardened me. I had come back to
+London disguised with a false arm and this I shook free. It was merely a
+gauntlet of thin wood which I had had made for me in Paris.
+
+“I flung him back on the bed and half knelt, half laid on him.
+
+“'Kara,' I said, 'you are going to die, a more merciful death than my
+wife died.'
+
+“He tried to speak. His soft hands gesticulated wildly, but I was half
+lying on one arm and held the other.
+
+“I whispered in his ear:
+
+“'Nobody will know who killed you, Kara, think of that! I shall go scot
+free--and you will be the centre of a fine mystery! All your letters
+will be read, all your life will be examined and the world will know you
+for what you are!'
+
+“I released his arm for just as long as it took to draw my knife and
+strike. I think he died instantly,” John Lexman said simply.
+
+“I left him where he was and went to the door. I had not much time to
+spare. I took the candles from my pocket. They were already ductile from
+the heat of my body.
+
+“I lifted up the steel latch of the door and propped up the latch with
+the smaller of the two candles, one end of which was on the middle
+socket and the other beneath the latch. The heat of the room I knew
+would still further soften the candle and let the latch down in a short
+time.
+
+“I was prepared for the telephone by his bedside though I did not
+know to whither it led. The presence of the paper-knife decided me. I
+balanced it across the silver cigarette box so that one end came under
+the telephone receiver; under the other end I put the second candle
+which I had to cut to fit. On top of the paper-knife at the candle end
+I balanced the only two books I could find in the room, and fortunately
+they were heavy.
+
+“I had no means of knowing how long it would take to melt the candle
+to a state of flexion which would allow the full weight of the books to
+bear upon the candle end of the paper-knife and fling off the receiver.
+I was hoping that Fisher had taken my warning and had gone. When I
+opened the door softly, I heard his footsteps in the hall below. There
+was nothing to do but to finish the play.
+
+“I turned and addressed an imaginary conversation to Kara. It was
+horrible, but there was something about it which aroused in me a curious
+sense of humour and I wanted to laugh and laugh and laugh!
+
+“I heard the man coming up the stairs and closed the door gingerly. What
+length of time would it take for the candle to bend!
+
+“To completely establish the alibi I determined to hold Fisher in
+conversation and this was all the easier since apparently he had not
+seen the envelope I had left on the table downstairs. I had not long
+to wait for suddenly with a crash I heard the steel latch fall in its
+place. Under the effect of the heat the candle had bent sooner than I
+had expected. I asked Fisher what was the meaning of the sound and he
+explained. I passed down the stairs talking all the time. I found a cab
+at Sloane Square and drove to my lodgings. Underneath my overcoat I was
+partly dressed in evening kit.
+
+“Ten minutes after I entered the door of my flat I came out a beardless
+man about town, not to be distinguished from the thousand others who
+would be found that night walking the promenade of any of the great
+music-halls. From Victoria Street I drove straight to Scotland Yard. It
+was no more than a coincidence that whilst I should have been speaking
+with you all, the second candle should have bent and the alarm be given
+in the very office in which I was sitting.
+
+“I assure you all in all earnestness that I did not suspect the cause of
+that ringing until Mr. Mansus spoke.
+
+“There, gentlemen, is my story!” He threw out his arms.
+
+“You may do with me as you will. Kara was a murderer, dyed a hundred
+times in innocent blood. I have done all that I set myself to do--that
+and no more--that and no less. I had thought to go away to America, but
+the nearer the day of my departure approached, the more vivid became
+the memory of the plans which she and I had formed, my girl... my poor
+martyred girl!”
+
+He sat at the little table, his hands clasped before him, his face lined
+and white.
+
+“And that is the end!” he said suddenly, with a wry smile.
+
+“Not quite!” T. X. swung round with a gasp. It was Belinda Mary who
+spoke.
+
+“I can carry it on,” she said.
+
+She was wonderfully self-possessed, thought T. X., but then T. X. never
+thought anything of her but that she was “wonderfully” something or the
+other.
+
+“Most of your story is true, Mr. Lexman,” said this astonishing girl,
+oblivious of the amazed eyes that were staring at her, “but Kara
+deceived you in one respect.”
+
+“What do you mean?” asked John Lexman, rising unsteadily to his feet.
+
+For answer she rose and walked back to the door with the chintz curtains
+and flung it open: There was a wait which seemed an eternity, and then
+through the doorway came a girl, slim and grave and beautiful.
+
+“My God!” whispered T. X. “Grace Lexman!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+They went out and left them alone, two people who found in this moment
+a heaven which is not beyond the reach of humanity, but which is seldom
+attained to. Belinda Mary had an eager audience all to her very self.
+
+“Of course she didn't die,” she said scornfully. “Kara was playing on
+his fears all the time. He never even harmed her--in the way Mr. Lexman
+feared. He told Mrs. Lexman that her husband was dead just as he told
+John Lexman his wife was gone. What happened was that he brought her
+back to England--”
+
+“Who?” asked T. X., incredulously.
+
+“Grace Lexman,” said the girl, with a smile. “You wouldn't think it
+possible, but when you realize that he had a yacht of his own and that
+he could travel up from whatever landing place he chose to his house in
+Cadogan Square by motorcar and that he could take her straight away into
+his cellar without disturbing his household, you'll understand that the
+only difficulty he had was in landing her. It was in the lower cellar
+that I found her.”
+
+“You found her in the cellar?” demanded the Chief Commissioner.
+
+The girl nodded.
+
+“I found her and the dog--you heard how Kara terrified her--and I
+killed the dog with my own hands,” she said a little proudly, and then
+shivered. “It was very beastly,” she admitted.
+
+“And she's been living with you all this time and you've said nothing!”
+ asked T. X., incredulously. Belinda Mary nodded.
+
+“And that is why you didn't want me to know where you were living?” She
+nodded again.
+
+“You see she was very ill,” she said, “and I had to nurse her up, and of
+course I knew that it was Lexman who had killed Kara and I couldn't tell
+you about Grace Lexman without betraying him. So when Mr. Lexman decided
+to tell his story, I thought I'd better supply the grand denouement.”
+
+The men looked at one another.
+
+“What are you going to do about Lexman?” asked the Chief Commissioner,
+“and, by the way, T. X., how does all this fit your theories!”
+
+“Fairly well,” replied T. X. coolly; “obviously the man who committed
+the murder was the man introduced into the room as Gathercole and as
+obviously it was not Gathercole, although to all appearance, he had lost
+his left arm.”
+
+“Why obvious?” asked the Chief Commissioner.
+
+“Because,” answered T. X. Meredith, “the real Gathercole had lost his
+right arm--that was the one error Lexman made.”
+
+“H'm,” the Chief pulled at his moustache and looked enquiringly round
+the room, “we have to make up our minds very quickly about Lexman,” he
+said. “What do you think, Carlneau?”
+
+The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“For my part I should not only importune your Home Secretary to pardon
+him, but I should recommend him for a pension,” he said flippantly.
+
+“What do you think, Savorsky?”
+
+The Russian smiled a little.
+
+“It is a very impressive story,” he said dispassionately; “it occurs to
+me that if you intend bringing your M. Lexman to judgment you are likely
+to expose some very pretty scandals. Incidentally,” he said, stroking
+his trim little moustache, “I might remark that any exposure which drew
+attention to the lawless conditions of Albania would not be regarded by
+my government with favour.”
+
+The Chief Commissioner's eyes twinkled and he nodded.
+
+“That is also my view,” said the Chief of the Italian bureau; “naturally
+we are greatly interested in all that happens on the Adriatic littoral.
+It seems to me that Kara has come to a very merciful end and I am not
+inclined to regard a prosecution of Mr. Lexman with equanimity.”
+
+“Well, I guess the political aspect of the case doesn't affect us very
+much,” said O'Grady, “but as one who was once mighty near asphyxiated
+by stirring up the wrong kind of mud, I should leave the matter where it
+is.”
+
+The Chief Commissioner was deep in thought and Belinda Mary eyed him
+anxiously.
+
+“Tell them to come in,” he said bluntly.
+
+The girl went and brought John Lexman and his wife, and they came in
+hand in hand supremely and serenely happy whatever the future might hold
+for them. The Chief Commissioner cleared his throat.
+
+“Lexman, we're all very much obliged to you,” he said, “for a very
+interesting story and a most interesting theory. What you have done, as
+I understand the matter,” he proceeded deliberately, “is to put yourself
+in the murderer's place and advance a theory not only as to how the
+murder was actually committed, but as to the motive for that murder. It
+is, I might say, a remarkable piece of reconstruction,” he spoke very
+deliberately, and swept away John Lexman's astonished interruption with
+a stern hand, “please wait and do not speak until I am out of hearing,”
+ he growled. “You have got into the skin of the actual assassin and have
+spoken most convincingly. One might almost think that the man who
+killed Remington Kara was actually standing before us. For that piece
+of impersonation we are all very grateful;” he glared round over
+his spectacles at his understanding colleagues and they murmured
+approvingly.
+
+He looked at his watch.
+
+“Now I am afraid I must be off,” he crossed the room and put out his
+hand to John Lexman. “I wish you good luck,” he said, and took both
+Grace Lexman's hands in his. “One of these days,” he said paternally, “I
+shall come down to Beston Tracey and your husband shall tell me another
+and a happier story.”
+
+He paused at the door as he was going out and looking back caught the
+grateful eyes of Lexman.
+
+“By the way, Mr. Lexman,” he said hesitatingly, “I don't think I should
+ever write a story called 'The Clue of the Twisted Candle,' if I were
+you.”
+
+John Lexman shook his head.
+
+“It will never be written,” he said, “--by me.”
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Clue of the Twisted Candle, by Edgar Wallace
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