William Le Queux (continued 3)

Part of the time Mabel’s sister was with me, until she grew tired, and returned alone to the hotel in a cab.

Earlier in the day I had telegraphed to Pelham to inquire whether Mabel had sent me any message at home, but the reply came that neither telegram nor letter had been received.

Though there seemed no connection whatever between the tragedy in Sussex Place and my wife’s flight, yet I could not help suspecting that there was, and that my apparent abandonment was due to the subtle, satanic influence of my mysterious neighbour. I was now all the more anxious to condemn him to the police. The remains of the poor Professor had been cremated in his own furnace, and by the blackguardly hands of the assassin.

Yet, before I could raise the finger of denunciation, I had to discover the fellow’s whereabouts, and this seemed a task impossible to accomplish. I had kept my eye upon the Times daily in the course of my quick journeys during that most eventful week, but no advertisement had appeared.

Next day, and the next, I spent alternately searching the hotels and idling in the Corso, on the Pincian, among the tourists in the Forum, or in the broad Piazza Colonna, the hub of Roman life. Among the hosts of foreigners who walked and drove in the Corso at the hour of the passeggiata, my eyes, and those of my bright little companion, were ever eager to find my dear wife’s handsome face.

But we saw her not. She and the man posing as myself had entirely and completely disappeared.

I sought counsel of the Questore, or chief of police, who, on hearing that I was in search of my wife, ordered the register of foreigners in Rome to be searched. But two days later he informed me with regret that the name of Holford did not appear.

In face of that my only conclusion was that, after leaving Florence, they had suddenly changed the course of their flight.

Their flight! Why had Mabel fled from me, after speeding so swiftly to meet me? Ay, that was the crucial question.

Late one afternoon I was standing upon the Pincian, leaning upon the balustrade of that popular promenade of the Romans, and watching the crowd of winter idlers who, in carriage and afoot, were taking the fresh, bright air. I had been there every day, hoping against hope either to recognise Mabel or the man Kirk among the crowd of wealthy cosmopolitans who thronged the hillside.

Before me moved the slow procession of all sorts and conditions of carriages, from the gaudily-coloured, smart motor-car of the young Italian elegant to the funereal carozza of the seedy marchesa, or the humble vettura of the tweed-skirted “Cookite.” Behind showed the soft grey rose of the glorious afterglow with the red roofs, tall towers and domes of the Eternal City lying deep below. Against the sky stood the tall cypresses—high, gloomy, sombre—and over all spread that light film of mist that rises from old Tiber when the dusk is gathering.

The scene was, perhaps, one of the most picturesque in all Italy, even surpassing that from the Piazza Michelangelo in Firenze, but to me, hipped and bewildered as I was, the chatter in a dozen tongues about me was irritating; and I turned my back upon the crowd, leaning my elbows upon the stone parapet, and gazing over the gay, light-hearted capital whence at that moment came up the jangling of bells started by the great bell at St. Peter’s and echoing from every church tower, the solemn call to evening prayer that is, alas! ever unheeded. In modern Italy only the peasant is pious; in the alto mondo religion is unfashionable.

Perhaps you have driven in the Corso, that narrow and most disappointing of thoroughfares, gossiped in the English tea-shop at five o’clock, taken your vermouth and bitters in the Aregno, and climbed the Pincian to see the sunset. If you have, then you know that life, you recognise amid that crowd faces of both sexes that you have seen at Aix, at Vichy, at Carlsbad, at Ostend, or in the rooms at Monte Carlo, many of them vicious, sin-hardened faces, careless, indolent, blasé; few, alas! with the freshness of youth or the open look indicated by pure-mindedness.

On the Pincian you have the light-hearted thoughtless world which exists only to be amused, the world which laughs at grim poverty because it obtains its wherewithal from the labours of those poor, underpaid and sweated millions in other countries who must work in order that these few favoured ones may indulge in their extravagances.

Sick to death, disappointed, worn out by a continual vigilance and with a deep anxiety gnawing ever at my heart-strings, I had turned from the scene, and was gazing across into the rose-tinted mists, when of a sudden I heard a voice at my elbow, exclaiming in broken English:

“Why, surely it’s the Signor Holford!”

I turned quickly, and to my amazement found myself confronted by the thin, sinister face of the dead Professor’s servant, Antonio Merli.

Chapter Sixteen.

Antonio Speaks Plainly.

“You, Antonio!” I gasped, staring at the fellow who, dressed in a dark grey suit and soft black felt hat, presented an appearance of ultra-respectability.

“Yes, signore, I am very surprised to find you here—in Rome,” he replied.

“Come,” I said abruptly, “tell me what has occurred. Why did you leave London so hurriedly?”

“I had some family affairs to attend to,” he answered. “I had to go to my home at Lucca to arrange for the future of my two nephews whose father is just dead. Pietro joined me there.”

“And you were joined also by Mr Kirk?” I said.

“Ah, no, signore!” protested the thin-faced Italian with an emphatic gesture. “I have not seen him since I left London.”

“Are you quite certain of that, Antonio?” I asked slowly, in disbelief, as I looked straight into his face.

“Quite. I know that he came abroad, but have no idea of his present whereabouts.”

“Now tell me, Antonio,” I urged, “who and what is Mr Kirk?”

The Italian shrugged his shoulders, answering:

“Ah, signore, you had better not ask. He is a mystery to me—as to you, and as he was to my poor master.”

“He killed your master—eh?” I suggested. “Now tell me the truth—once and for all.”

“I do not know,” was his quick reply, with a strange flash in his dark eyes. “If he did, then I have no knowledge of it. I slept on the top floor, and heard nothing.”

“Who was the man who went to Edinburgh on the night of the tragedy?”

“Ah! Dio mio! Do not reopen all that puzzle!” he protested. “I am just as mystified as you yourself, signore.”

I looked straight in the man’s face, wondering if he were speaking the truth. His hard, deep-lined countenance was difficult to read. The Italian is such a born diplomatist that his face seldom betrays his thoughts. He can smile upon you sweetly, even though behind his back he grips a dagger ready to strike you to the heart. And so old Antonio’s face was sphinx-like, as all his race.

“You saw Leonard Langton at Calais,” I remarked.

“He told you that!” gasped the dead man’s servant, with a start. “What did he say of me?”

“Nothing, except what was good. He told me that you were a trusted servant of the Professor.”

“Ah, my poor, dear master!” echoed the man, his face turned thoughtfully away towards the afterglow. “If I knew—ah, Madonna mia, if I only knew the truth!”

“You suspect Kirk?” I suggested. “Why not tell me more?”

“I suspect him no more than I suspect others,” was his calm reply. “Be certain, signore, that there is much more behind that terrible affair than you suspect. There was some strong motive for my poor master’s death, depend upon it! But,” he asked, “where did you meet the Signor Langton?”

Briefly I related the circumstances of Kirk’s presence in the house, his escape, and the discovery I afterwards made in the laboratory.

“You actually found the evidences of the crime had been destroyed!” cried the man. Yet my sharp vigilance detected that beneath his surprise he breathed more freely when I announced the fact that the body of the Professor was no longer existent.

“Yes,” I said, after a slight pause, during which my eyes were fixed upon his. “Destroyed—and by Kershaw Kirk, whom I found alone there, with the furnace burning.”

The Italian shook his head blankly. Whether he held suspicion of Kirk or not I was unable to determine. They had been friends. That I well knew. But to me it appeared as though they had met in secret after the tragedy, and had quarrelled.

I told the man nothing of my journey to Scotland or of the puzzling discoveries I had made; but in reply to his repeated questioning as to why I was in Rome I explained that I was in search of my wife, telling him of the unaccountable manner in which she had been called away from London by means of the forged telegram.

“And you say that the signora knew nothing of the affair at Sussex Place?”

“Nothing, Antonio. It was not a matter to mention to a woman.”

“You suspect Kirk, of course, because his description is very like the man described as being with her in Florence. What motive could he have in enticing her away from you?”

“A sinister one, without a doubt,” I said.

“But, Antonio, I beg of you to tell me more concerning that man Kirk. You have known him for a long time—eh?”

“Four years, perhaps. He was a frequent visitor at the Professor’s, but young Langton hated him. I once overheard Miss Ethelwynn’s lover telling her father some extraordinary story concerning Kirk. But the Professor declined to listen; he trusted his friend implicitly.”

“And foolishly so,” I remarked.

“Very, for since that I gained knowledge that Kirk, rather than being my master’s friend, was his bitterest enemy. Miss Ethelwynn was the first to discover it. She has been devoted to her father ever since the death of the poor signora.”

“But how do you account for that remarkable occurrence behind those locked doors?” I asked, as we stood there in the corner, with the gay chatter of the society of Rome about us; an incongruous situation, surely. “What is your theory?”

“Ah, signore, I have none,” he declared emphatically. “How can I have? It is a complete mystery.”

“Yes; one equally extraordinary is the fact that Miss Ethelwynn, who was seen by us dead and cold, is yet still alive.”

“Alive!” he gasped, with a quick start which showed me that his surprise was genuine. “I—I really cannot believe you, Signor Holford! What proof have you? Why, both you and Kirk declared that she was dead!”

“The proof I have is quite conclusive. Leonard Langton spoke to her on the telephone to Broadstairs, and he is now down there with her.”

“Impossible, signore!” declared the man, shaking his head dubiously.

“When did you last see her?”

“She was lying on the couch in the dining-room, as you saw, but at Kirk’s orders she was removed from the house in a four-wheeled cab. I explained to the cabman that she was unwell, as she had unfortunately taken too much wine. Some man—a friend of Kirk’s—went with her.”

“And what was their destination?” I demanded.

“Ah, signore, I do not know.”

“Now, Antonio, please do not lie,” I said reproachfully. “You know quite well that your master’s daughter was removed to a certain house in Foley Street, Tottenham Court Road.”

“Why,” he exclaimed, turning slightly pale, and staring at me, “how did you know that?”

I laughed, refusing to satisfy his curiosity. In his excitement his accent had become more marked.

“Well,” he said at last, “what does it matter if the signorina is still alive, as you say? For my own part, I refuse to believe it until I see her in the flesh with my own eyes.”

“Well,” I remarked, “all this is beside the mark, Antonio. I have understood from everyone that you were the devoted and trusted servant of Professor Greer, therefore you surely, as a man of honour, should endeavour to assist in clearing up the mystery, and bringing the real assassin to justice.”

The man sighed, saying:

“I fear, signore, that will never be accomplished. The mystery has ramifications so wide that one cannot untangle its threads. But,” he added, after a slight pause, “would you object to telling me how you first became acquainted with Signor Kirk?”

Deeming it best to humour this man, who undoubtedly possessed certain secret knowledge, I briefly described the means by which Kirk had sought my friendship. And as I did so, I could see the slight smile at the corner of his tightened lips, a smile of satisfaction, it seemed, at the ingenious manner in which I had been misled by his friend.

“Then he brought you to Sussex Place on purpose to show you the dead body of my master?”

“He did. I had no desire to be mixed up in any such affair, only he begged me to stand his friend, at the same time protesting his innocence.”

“His innocence!” exclaimed the Italian fiercely between his clenched teeth.

“You believe him guilty, then?” I cried, quick to notice his lapse of attitude.

“Ah, no, signore,” he responded, recovering himself the next second, a bland smile overspreading his dark, complex countenance. “You misunderstand me; I suspect nobody.”

“But you had a more intimate knowledge of the household, and of the Professor’s friends, than anyone else. Therefore you, surely, have your own suspicions?”

“No; until one point of the mystery, which has apparently never occurred to you, has been cleared up, both you and I can only remain in ignorance, as we are at present.”

“Why not be quite frank with me, Antonio?” I urged. “I do not believe you are your master’s assassin; I will never believe that! But you are not open with me. Put yourself in my place. I have been entrapped by Kirk into a network of mystery and tragedy, and have lost my wife, who, I fear, is in the hands of conspirators. I have not been to the police, because Kirk urged me not to seek their aid. So—”

“No, signore,” he interrupted quickly, “do not tell the police anything. It would be injudicious—fatal!”

“Ah!” I cried, “then you are acting in conjunction with Kirk? You, too, are trying to mislead me!”

“I am not, signore,” he protested. “On the tomb of my mother,” he declared, making use of the common Italian oath, “I am only acting in your interests. The disappearance of your signora adds mystery to the affair.”

“What do you suggest as my next move? If I find Mabel, I care nothing. The tragic affair may remain a mystery for ever. I leave it to others to discover who killed Professor Greer.”

“You actually mean that, signore?” he cried. “You would really refrain from seeking further, providing you rediscover your wife?”

I was silent a few seconds. His eagerness was sufficient admission of a guilty conscience.

“Yes,” I said. “What matter the affairs of others, so long as the wife I love is innocent and at my side? She is the victim of a plot from which I must rescue her.”

The Italian gazed again away across the roofs of the Eternal City, now growing more indistinct in the gathering mists.

“I fear, Signor Holford,” he at last exclaimed with a sigh, “that you have a very difficult task before you. You are evidently in ignorance of certain curious facts.”

“Concerning what?”

“Concerning your wife.”

“You would cast a slur upon her good name?” I cried excitedly, my anger rising.

“Not at all,” was his calm, polite response, his lips parted in a pleasant smile. “You asked me to assist you, and I was about to give you advice—that is, provided that you have told me the truth.”

“About what?”

“About Miss Ethelwynn—that she still lives.”

“Of that there is no doubt,” I said.

“And if you found your signora alive and well, you would undertake to make no further inquiry?” he repeated, with undue eagerness.

“Ah! You wish to tie me down to that?” I cried. “You do so because you and your friends are in fear. You realise your own peril—eh?”

“No,” declared the man at my side; “you still entirely misunderstand me. You are an Englishman, and you mistrust me merely because I am a foreigner. It is a prejudice all you English have, more or less.”

“I entertain no prejudice,” I declared hotly. “But to tell you the truth, Antonio, I am tired of all this mystery, and now that Kirk and his friends have alienated me from my wife, I intend to take action.”

“In what manner?” he asked calmly.

“I shall go to the Questore here, in Rome, and tell the truth. I happen to know him personally.”

“And you will mention my name!” he gasped, well knowing probably the drastic measures adopted by the police of his own country.

“I shall not be able to avoid mentioning it,” I responded, with a smile.

“Bene!” he answered, in a hard, hoarse voice. “And if you did—well, signore, I can promise that you would never again see your signora alive. Go to the Questore now! Tell him all you know! Apply for my arrest! And then wait the disaster that must fall upon you, and upon your missing wife. An unseen hand struck Professor Greer—an unseen hand will most assuredly strike you, as swiftly, as unerringly.” And then facing me defiantly, a grin upon his sinister face, the fellow added: “Silence, signore, is your only guarantee of safety—I assure you!”

Chapter Seventeen.

Ethelwynn Speaks.

I looked into the closely-set, crafty eyes of the old Italian, and saw both determination and desperation.

Was he the man who killed Professor Greer?

“I require no guarantee of safety from you, Antonio,” I answered quickly. “I am now solely in search of my wife. Where is she?”

“Caro signore, I have no idea,” was the old fellow’s bland reply, as he exhibited his palms. “I have not the pleasure of the signora’s acquaintance.”

“But you know where Kirk is hiding, and she is with him, assisting him in discovering my whereabouts, I believe!” I cried.

“That the Signor Kirk crossed from Dover to Calais I am well aware, but of his movements afterwards I assure you I am in complete ignorance.”

What could I do further?

He professed to be equally mystified with myself regarding my wife’s disappearance, declaring his readiness and anxiety to assist me if it were possible.

Then, in the falling twilight, we slowly descended the road together, he giving me his address in the Via Tordinona, a side street close to the Bridge of Sant’ Angelo, which I noted on my shirt-cuff. At the Porto del Popolo we parted, and I returned to the hotel to dine with Gwen, whom I found awaiting me in feverish expectation. I told her briefly of my meeting with a man I knew, but explained nothing of his connection with the house in Sussex Place, nor of the secret tragedy that had been enacted.

Next day was the fifth of February, the day of Santa Agata. How well I recollect it, for at noon we bade farewell to the Eternal City, and as the train roared on across those wide, dreary marshes of the Maremma on our journey northward, I sat in the corner of the compartment and made up my mind to go direct and seek Ethelwynn, the girl whom I had seen dead, and who was yet alive.

I recalled all Antonio’s ominous statements; how that he had expressed a doubt whether the professor’s assassin would ever be brought to justice, and how he had threatened that, if I betrayed the truth to the police, I should never again meet Mabel alive. Did not those words of his conclusively prove complicity in the affair? Why did he command my silence at peril of my dear wife’s life. He had lied when he told me that he was ignorant of her whereabouts; but if he were the actual assassin, or even one of the accomplices, I saw that I could hope for no assistance from him. It was that conclusion which caused me to resolve to invoke the aid of the girl whom I had seen lying upon the floor, cold and lifeless.

From Rome to Broadstairs is a far cry, but two days later we alighted at Victoria, and on the morning of the third day I found myself at the door of a pretty newly-built red-roofed house standing in its own ground high upon the cliffs between the Grand Hotel at Broadstairs and Dumpton Gap.

A neat maid opened the door, and, on inquiring for Miss Greer, I was shown across a square, ample hall to a small cosy sitting-room overlooking the sea, facing direct upon the treacherous Goodwins.

The maid who took my card returned to say that her mistress would be with me in a few moments. And then I stood at the window, gazing along at the quaint old-world harbour of Broadstairs, with “Bleak House” standing high beyond, full of keen anxiety as to the result of the interview.

She came at last, a tall, slim figure, in a dark stuff skirt and cream silk blouse, relieved by a touch of colour at the throat, a sweet-faced, fair-haired, delicate girl, whose large blue eyes wore a look of wonder at the visit of a stranger. She whom I had seen a corpse was certainly alive, and living here in the flesh!

“I must apologise for this intrusion, Miss Greer,” I began, for want of something better to say, “but I may introduce myself as an acquaintance of Mr Langton—an acquaintance under somewhat romantic and curious circumstances.”

“Mr Langton has already told me how he met you—when he believed there were burglars in our house in Sussex Place,” she said, with a brightening smile.

“Yes,” I replied. “I—well, I was put there on guard, but Mr Langton’s suspicions fortunately proved to be unfounded.”

“Ah!” she said, with just the slightest suspicion of a sigh. “I’m glad of that—very glad!”

“The reason of my visit, Miss Greer, is,” I explained after a brief pause, “to ask you whether you are aware of the whereabouts of my friend, your father?” And I fixed my eyes straight upon hers.

“My father went to Scotland,” she replied, without wavering. “At present he’s in Germany. The last I heard of him was three days ago, when he was in Strassburg.”

“He wrote to you?” I gasped, staring at her in amazement that this ready lie should be upon her lips.

She noted my surprise, and said:

“Yes, why shouldn’t he?”

What reply could I give? Could I tell her that the Professor, her father, had been cruelly done to death, and his body cremated in his own experimental furnace? Had I not given my word of honour to that weird will-o’-the-wisp, Kershaw Kirk, that I would preserve silence? Besides, my only thought was for my own dear wife, whose face now rose ever before me.

“Well,” I stammered. “I—well—I believed that you were unaware of his whereabouts, Miss Greer. At least, I understood so from your father’s butler, Antonio.”

She smiled, regarding me quite calmly. She was either in ignorance of what had occurred, or else she was a most perfect actress.

Yet how could she feign ignorance? Had not Kirk told me that she had thrown herself upon her knees before her father’s body, vowing a fierce, bitter vengeance upon his assassin? Perhaps Kirk had lied, of course, yet I recollected that the discovery had been made while the dead man’s daughter was in the house, and that after the astounding incident she had removed with Morgan, her maid, to Lady Mellor’s, while the other servants—unaware of what had occurred—had either been sent away down to Broadstairs, or else discharged. In secret, this handsome girl before me—the girl with that perfect dimpled face and innocent blue eyes—had returned, and we had found her lying apparently dead in the dining-room.

Ethelwynn’s present attitude of pretended ignorance of her father’s fate struck me as both amazing and culpable.

“You say that the Professor was in Strassburg?” I said. “Is he still there?”

“As far as I know,” she replied, twisting her rings nervously around her thin white finger.

“Could I telegraph to him?” I ventured to suggest.

“Certainly, if you have business with him,” she responded. “I’ll go and get the address.” And she swiftly left the room, leaving on the air a sweet breath of violets, a bunch of which she wore in her belt.

A few minutes later she returned with a letter in her hand.

“His address is Kronenburger Strasse, number fifteen,” she exclaimed. “Do you know Strassburg? It’s just at the corner, by the bridge over the canal.”

“I have never been in Strassburg,” was my reply. “But I have important business with the Professor, so, with your permission, I will telegraph to him from here.”

“Most certainly,” she said. “He tells me that his affairs are likely to keep him abroad for a considerable time. But—” and she paused. At last she added: “I have never heard him speak of you as a friend, Mr—Mr Holford.”

“Perhaps not,” I said quickly. “The fact is, I’m a confidential friend of his, as well as of Mr Kershaw Kirk.”

“A friend of Mr Kirk!” she cried, staring at me with a startled expression, half of fear and half of surprise.

“Yes,” I said. “I believe Mr Kirk is an intimate friend both of your father and yourself. Is not that so?”

“Certainly. He’s our very best friend. Both Dad and I trust him implicitly,” replied the girl. “Indeed, during my father’s absence he is left in charge of my affairs.”

For a moment I remained silent.

“He is your friend—eh?”

“Certainly. Why do you ask?”

“Well, because I feared that he was not your friend,” I answered. “Do you happen to know his whereabouts?”

“He’s abroad somewhere, but where I don’t know.”

“Ah!” I laughed lightly, in pretence of careless irresponsibility. “He has always struck me as a strange figure, ever mysterious and ever evasive. Who and what is he?”

“You probably know as much of him, Mr Holford, as I do,” was the girl’s answer. “I only know him to be an intimate friend of my father, and the ideal of an English gentleman. Of his profession, or of his past, I know nothing. My father, who knows him intimately, is always silent upon that point.”

I noted that she spoke in the present tense, as though to preserve the fiction that her father was still alive. Ah! this girl with the innocent eyes and the wonderful hair, the beloved of young Leonard Langton, was an admirable actress, without a doubt. Without the tremble of an eyelid, or the movement of a muscle of the mouth, she had actually declared to me that Professor Greer was still alive!

“To me, Kirk is a mystery,” I declared, my gaze fixed straight into her eyes as I stood near the window where the wintry sunlight from across the sea fell full upon her; “at times I doubt him.”

“And so does Mr Langton,” she responded. “But I think that the fears of both of you are quite groundless. Mr Kirk is a little eccentric, that’s all.”

“When did you first know him?” I inquired.

“Oh, when I came back from Lausanne, where I had been at school, I found him to be my father’s most trusted friend. They used to spend many evenings together in the study, smoking and discussing abstruse points of foreign politics in which I, a woman, have no interest.”

“And has he always showed friendship towards you, Miss Greer?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, and to Leonard also, though of late I fear there has been some little unpleasantness between them.”

At this I pricked my ears. I recollected that young Langton had, to me, pretended ignorance of the very existence of Kershaw Kirk! What was the meaning of his attitude towards the man whom I had so foolishly allowed to escape, and who had repaid my friendship by inducing my wife to travel upon a fool’s errand, and, as I feared, fall into a fatal trap laid open for her?

Antonio had covertly threatened me, and I knew instinctively that my well-beloved Mabel was now in direst peril. Ah! that wild fevered life I was now leading was one continuous whirl of dread, of suspicion, and of dark despair.

“You have actual knowledge that Mr Langton has quarrelled with Kirk?” I asked at last.

“Yes, and I much regret it, for Mr Kirk has been our very good friend throughout. It was he who urged my father to allow Mr Langton to pay court to me,” she added. “It was he who made the suggestion that we might be allowed to marry. Such being the case, how can I think ill of the eccentric old fellow?”

“Of course not,” I said, “but is your trust really well founded, do you think? Are you quite certain that he is your friend, or only your pretended ally?”

“I am quite certain,” she declared, “I have had proof abundant of it.”

“Your father did not, I believe, tell you of his projected visit to Germany before leaving?”

“No,” was her reply. “He went up to Edinburgh, but after having left me was suddenly compelled to alter his plans. He crossed to the Hook of Holland, travelling from York to Harwich without returning to London.”

“This he has told you?”

“Yes, in a letter he wrote from Cologne. I wanted to join him, but he would not allow me, and ordered me to come down here. He is very busy concerning one of his recent discoveries.”

“Ah!” I sighed. “He would not allow you to go to him, eh?”

“No; he made excuse that the weather was better just now in Broadstairs than in Southern Germany, and said that his future movements were very uncertain, and that he could not be hampered by a woman.”

In that reply I recognised an evasiveness which was natural. The Professor himself was dead, and this mysterious person posing as him was, of course, disinclined to meet Ethelwynn face to face.

Yet that even surely did not affect the girl’s amazing attitude? She herself had seen her father dead, yet was now actually assisting the impostor to keep up the fiction that he was still alive!

Chapter Eighteen.

I Draw the Impostor.

Having invented a story of a secret business friendship with the Professor, I remained with his pretty daughter for perhaps a quarter of an hour longer.

From her I further learned that Leonard Langton was now back in London, and that Kirk had written her implicit instructions to remain at Broadstairs for the present.

Then I bade her farewell, and walked back along the cliffs, past the Grand Hotel, to the quaint parade of the old-fashioned little watering-place, turning up to the chemist’s shop, which is, at the same time, the post office.

Thence I dispatched a telegram addressed to Professor Greer at the address in Strassburg which his daughter had given me, appending Kirk’s name, and asking for a reply to be sent to the Albion Hotel at Broadstairs, where I intended staying.

Afterwards I strolled to the hotel, ate my luncheon, and idled along the deserted jetty and promenade throughout the bleak, bright afternoon in eager expectation of a response from the impostor. My thought was ever on my dear lost Mabel. Fettered by ignorance and mystery, I knew not in which direction to search, nor could I discern any motive by which we should be thus parted.

My tea I took in the hotel, and afterwards smoked a cigar, until just before six the waiter handed me a message, a brief reply to mine, which read:

“Why are you running risks in Broadstairs, when you should be elsewhere? Be judicious and leave.—Greer.”

I read the message over a dozen times. What risks could Kirk be running by coming to Broadstairs? Was not that telegram essentially a word of warning given by one accomplice to another?

And yet Ethelwynn trusted Kirk just as blindly and foolishly as her father had done.

But was not the truth a strange one? She had concealed from me, as she was concealing from the world, that the Professor had died at the hand of an unknown assassin.

Or was it that she herself was an accomplice?

No, I could never believe that. I refused to give credence to any such suggestion.

I ascended the long hill to Broadstairs Station, and half an hour later left for Victoria. My intention was to go direct to Strassburg and there to discover and unmask the impostor. But ere I reached London the night mail for the Continent had already left Charing Cross, so I took a taxi-cab to my lonely home, where Gwen was awaiting me, still anxious and expectant.

I told her of the fruitlessness of my errand, whereupon she sank back into her chair, staring straight into the fire.

In brief I explained that I had discovered the existence of a person in Strassburg who could probably give me a clue to the whereabouts of Kirk and Mabel. Hence my intention of departing by the first service next morning.

“Cannot you telegraph and ask?” suggested the girl. “We seem, Harry, to be losing so much time,” she added frantically. “You haven’t been to the police.”

“I know, Gwen,” I said in sorrow, “but I can’t do more. To telegraph further might close the channel of our inquiry. No, we must still remain patient.”

Then, after snatching some food which had been left in the dining-room for me, I swallowed a glass of burgundy and entered the small room which I used as my particular den.

From there I rang up Pelham on the telephone, and heard the latest details concerning the business which I was now sadly neglecting. Afterwards I sat down and wrote an advertisement for the Times, an appeal addressed to “Silence” for news of my lost wife, an appeal which at the same time contained a veiled threat of exposure of the affair in Sussex Place.

This I concluded, and, ringing up an express messenger, dispatched it to the advertisement offices of the paper.

Then, with sudden resolve, I went forth to Wimpole Street to call upon Leonard Langton.

I found him in his cosy, well-furnished chambers, busy writing letters, while the round-faced man seated in a big arm-chair by the fire smoking a pipe he introduced as his chum with whom he shared chambers, Doctor Hamilton Flynn.

“Flynn’s a specialist on the nose and throat,” he laughed. “He has his consulting rooms along in Harley Street, and we pig it here together.”

“Jolly comfortable quarters,” I remarked, glancing round. “I called here before, but you were out.”

“Yes, so sorry!” he exclaimed. “Sit down and have a cigar,” and he handed me a box of most excellent weeds.

“Well,” exclaimed the smart young fellow who was the confidential secretary of Sir Albert Oppenheim, “I’m really glad to see you again, Mr Holford. That was a most mysterious incident at Sussex Place the other evening,” he added. “I’m still convinced that somebody was in the house. The Professor’s furnace was alight, you recollect, and the laboratory door stood open.”

“Langton has told me all about it,” remarked the doctor in a deep voice; “very curious, it seems.”

“Most extraordinary,” I declared, “and the more so that Merli, the butler, should have suddenly disappeared. The other day I met him in Rome.”

“Met Antonio!” gasped Ethelwynn’s lover, staring at me in amazement. “Have you been to Italy?”

“Yes. I told him of our search, but he declared himself ignorant of everything, though he admitted having seen you passing through the buffet at Calais-Maritime.”

“What is he doing in Rome?”

“I have no idea; I was there in a vain endeavour to recover my lost wife. She has been misled by a forged telegram purporting to come from myself, and is somewhere on the Continent. Where, however, I cannot tell.”

“You’ve lost your wife, eh?” asked the doctor, glancing strangely across at his companion, I thought. His face was dark and aquiline, his shoulders sloped. He was not a man to be trusted. “You think she’s been tricked?” he added. “Why?”

“Ah, at present I can form no theory as to the motive. If I could I might perchance discover the person responsible for her disappearance,” and I briefly told him of my frantic journey to the Italian capital.

“And now I am going to Strassburg to-morrow,” I added.

“Why to Strassburg?” inquired Doctor Flynn, regarding me fixedly with those keen eyes of his.

“Because Professor Greer is there, and I have an idea that he can tell me something.”

“The Professor is no longer there,” was Langton’s quick interruption. “Half an hour ago I spoke to Ethelwynn on the telephone, and she told me that she had just heard by telegraph from her father that he had left for Linz on his way to Hungary.”

My heart fell within me. Evidently my telegram signed Kirk had scared the man passing himself off as the Professor.

“But I might go on to Linz, or catch him up somewhere in Hungary,” I suggested.

“It would be futile, my dear fellow,” said Langton.

“Why?”

“Well, just at present Professor Greer wishes to be left entirely alone by his friends.”

“But there must be some reason,” I cried, for there seemed on every hand to be a conspiracy of silence again me.

“There is a reason,” replied the young man in a low, calm voice, “one which, however, seems mysterious.”

“Ah!” I cried. “Then even you are mystified by these strange happenings?”

“Yes,” he replied, knocking the ash from his cigar, “I have had certain suspicions aroused, Holford—vague suspicions of something wrong in the Professor’s household. Antonio is absent, the servants have all been paid and dispersed, the house in Sussex place is closed, and—”

“And the Professor is a fugitive, fleeing towards Hungary,” I added. “Has not Miss Ethelwynn told you anything?”

“What she has told me has been in complete confidence. It has caused me a great deal of surprise and apprehension, Holford, and this surprise has been increased by what you have told me this evening—that your wife has been enticed away, and is missing.”

“But what connection can my wife possibly have with any occurrence at the house of Professor Greer?” I demanded. “She was in ignorance of everything. She was not even acquainted with Greer. I might tell you that to-day I have been down to Broadstairs and seen Miss Ethelwynn,” I added.

“Ethelwynn did not seem to remember ever having met you when I told her of our encounter at the door, and the subsequent events.”

“I am a friend of the Professor’s, not of his daughter,” I hastened to explain. “But are you absolutely certain that a journey to Strassburg to-morrow would be useless?”

“Absolutely. If Greer consented to see his friends I would be the first to see him.”

“And he has refused even you, eh?” I asked, smiling within myself at the superior knowledge I possessed.

“He has. He refuses, too, to allow his daughter to go to him.”

“But why?” I asked.

“For reasons known, I suppose, to himself.”

“Does he give none?”

“He vaguely answers that certain matters concerning a great scientific discovery he has made compel him at present to hold aloof from both family and friends. He fears, I think, that someone who has discovered his secret may betray it.”

“But surely Ethelwynn would not?” I cried. “I desire to see the Professor because I feel confident he can, if he will, explain the motive of the trap into which my wife has fallen.”

“If he refuses to see his own daughter he will hardly see you,” remarked the dark-faced doctor. “Under exactly what circumstances has Mrs Holford disappeared?”

I briefly explained, at the same time regarding the round-shouldered specialist with some antagonism. To me, it appeared as though he were erecting an invisible barrier between myself and the knowledge of the truth. He seemed entirely Langton’s friend, corroborating his every word.

And the more curious became his attitude when at last I remarked with firm and resolute air:

“Well, if Professor Greer refuses to see me, then I shall invoke the aid of the police. They will probably very soon discover him, wherever he may be.”

“I hardly think that would be a wise policy,” remarked Flynn, tossing his cigar-end into the fire, and rising quickly from his chair, “unless, of course, you could make some direct charge against him.”

I was silent for a moment.

“And if I did? What then?” I asked, speaking boldly in a clear voice, my eyes fixed upon his, for remember I was fighting for knowledge of my dear wife’s whereabouts.

“Well—if you did,” was his deliberate reply, “it would be you yourself that would suffer, Mr Holford, and no one else.”

Was it not astounding, startling?

This doctor, the bosom friend of Ethelwynn’s lover, had given me exactly the same threatening reply as Antonio had given me on the Pincian in Rome.

What could it mean? The reason why the false Professor was avoiding friends and enemies alike was, of course, sufficiently plain to me. But for what reason was my well-beloved Mabel, the loving wife whom I adored, held in the unscrupulous hands of those who killed Professor Greer?

And why was every effort of mine to discover her met only by threats of impending disaster?

I gazed at the two men before me in silent defiance.

If it cost me my own life I intended to discover her and hold her dear form once again in my arms.

She was mine—mine before God and before man; and these persons seeking for some mysterious motive to shield the false Professor should not further stand in the way of justice.

“You think I dare not go to the police!” I cried at last. “Very well, if you care to come with me to Scotland Yard now—for I am going straight there—I will, in the presence of both of you, unfold a strange tale which they’ll be very much surprised to hear.”

“You believe you know the truth!” laughed Langton. “No, my dear Holford. Don’t be such a fool! The police cannot help in this affair, for the mystery is far too complicated. Keep your own counsel.”

“Yes,” I sneered, “and depend upon the man of whom you have denied all knowledge—the man Kershaw Kirk.”

“Kershaw Kirk!” gasped the doctor, and I saw that he went pale, his dark eyes starting from his head. “Do you know him? Is he—is he your friend, Mr Holford—or—or your enemy?”

Chapter Nineteen.

Gwen Reveals Something.

It struck me that this keen-eyed, crafty-faced, round-shouldered specialist in diseases of the throat intended to profit by information derived from me regarding the mysterious Kirk. Why, I did not know. We all of us have at times a strange intuition of impending evil, one that we cannot account for and cannot describe.

Recollect, I was only just an ordinary man, a hard-working industrious dealer in motor-cars, a man who made a fair income, who was no romancer, and was entirely devoted to his wife, who had, ever since his marriage, been his best friend and adviser.

The Professor was a scientist, I remembered, and this man Hamilton Flynn was apparently a doctor of some note. Could there be any connection between the pair, I wondered. Flynn, Langton’s most intimate friend, was no doubt aware of much, if not all, that transpired in the Professor’s household. That he knew Kershaw Kirk was apparent by his surprise when I mentioned his name.

“Kirk is a mere acquaintance of mine,” I responded, after a brief pause; “whether he is my friend, or my enemy, remains to be seen.”

“He’s your enemy, depend upon that, Mr Holford,” declared Flynn emphatically. “He is a marvellously clever schemer, and the friend of few.”

I bit my lip. Well did I know, alas! that the fellow whose asides to his pet “Joseph” were so entertaining was not my friend.

It was upon my tongue to explain how the description of that man who was travelling with my wife in search of me tallied with that of my strange neighbour who had, with such subtle cunning, drawn me into that mysterious tragedy. But next second I hesitated. This man Flynn I mistrusted. My impression was that he was not playing a straight game, either with myself or with his friend Leonard Langton.

A thousand questions I had to ask those men—and Langton especially—but I saw by their attitude that their intention was rather to mislead me than to reveal anything. When I presently bade them farewell neither of them offered to assist me in my search for Mabel.

Therefore I went forth into the darkness and silence of Wimpole Street—for it was now near midnight—and walked down into Oxford Street ere I could find a taxi-cab to convey me back to my now cheerless home.

Lying awake that night, I decided to postpone my journey to Germany. It was evident that the impostor passing himself off as the Professor had taken my telegram purporting to come from Kirk as a warning, and had escaped. I had been a fool to telegraph. I should have gone there instead. His reason for keeping up the fiction that the Professor was alive was, of course, obvious, for while he did so there would be no inquiry into the whereabouts of the missing man.

I had made a promise to Kershaw Kirk, yet now that he had so grossly deceived me, why should I keep it? Why should I not tell the truth?

I reflected; there were, I saw, three reasons why I should still preserve silence. The first was because, after that lapse of time, I should be suspected, perhaps arrested, as an accomplice and dragged through a criminal court. The second was that Ethelwynn herself was, for some amazing reason, pretending that her father still lived; and the third was by reason of the strange threat of Mabel’s death uttered by the evil-faced Italian, and repeated by that Harley Street specialist who was Leonard Langton’s closest friend.

The assassins were actually holding my dear wife as hostage against any revelation I dared to make! That, in a word, was the true position.

I paced my room that night in the agony of despair. Of nothing did I think but the dear, sweet-faced woman so suddenly enticed away from my side by reason of her eagerness to meet me. She was a woman of high ideals and of lofty sentiments; a womanly woman who, though fond of a little gaiety and of the theatre, realised that her place was in her own home, where she reigned supreme.

Before my marriage my father, as fathers will, had looked upon her with considerable misgiving. She was a little too flighty, too fond of dress, of dinners, and dances, he had said. But after our wedding and our honeymoon spent in a car touring up in Scotland, she had settled down, and never for a single instant had I regretted my choice. Few men could say that.

Indeed, up to that day when Kershaw Kirk called to inspect the Eckhardt tyre, I was one of the happiest men in all London; prosperous in my business, and contented in my love.

Now, alas! all had changed. I was obsessed by the knowledge of a great and startling secret, and at the same time I had lost all that to me was most dear and cherished.

Next morning Gwen, fresh in her clean cotton blouse, and the big black bow in her hair, sat in her accustomed place at the breakfast table, but after greeting me lapsed into a thoughtful silence.

At last she asked: “Have you packed your things, Harry?”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you!” I exclaimed. “I’m not going to-day. I’ve changed my mind.”

“Not going? Why, I thought you intended to see the Professor in Strassburg?” she cried.

“He has left,” I sighed; “I learned last night that he is on his way to Hungary.”

“And will you not follow?” asked the girl in reproach. “Will you not try to discover where Mabel is?”

“I’ve tried, Gwen—and failed,” I answered despairingly.

“You have not told me all, Harry,” she said, looking across at me. At the head of the table was Mabel’s empty place. “You have concealed something from me,” she declared.

“It is nothing that you should know,” was my quick reply. “My own private business does not concern you, Gwen—or Mabel either.”

“But surely I ought to know the truth? Mabel has been decoyed away abroad, and there must be some motive for it,” she replied in bitter complaint.

“Of course, my dear girl, but even I, in the knowledge of what has passed, cannot discern what the motive can be. If I could, all would be plain sailing, and we would soon recover her,” I said.

“Who is this Professor of whom you have spoken?” she asked, leaning her elbows upon the table, and gazing straight into my eyes.

“Professor Greer, the well-known chemist.”

“Greer?” echoed the girl, staring at me strangely.

“Yes, why?”

But she hesitated, as though disinclined to tell me something which was upon her mind.

“You know the Professor, eh, Harry?”

“I’ve met him once,” I replied, which was perfectly true.

“And only once?” she asked.

“Only once,” was my quick response.

“That’s curious.”

“Why?”

“Well—well, I suppose I ought not to tell you, for, of course, Harry—it’s no business of mine,” remarked the girl, “but as Mabel is now missing, no fact should be concealed, and I think you really ought to know that—”

“That what?” I cried. “Tell me quickly, Gwen! Conceal nothing from me!”

“Well, that Mabel one morning received a note delivered by express messenger, and I asked her whom it was from. She seemed unusually flurried, and told me that it was from Professor Greer.”

“But she never knew him!” I gasped. “What day was that?”

“The day before you returned from Glasgow.”

“The same day on which she received that telegram from Italy purporting to be signed by me!”

I exclaimed. “Why didn’t you tell me this before, Gwen?”

“Mabel’s affairs have nothing to do with me. I am not interested in her correspondents, Harry,” she replied. “Surely it is not my place to carry tales to you, is it?”

“No; pardon me,” I said, hastening to excuse myself, “but in this affair the truth must be told.”

“Then why haven’t you told it to me?” asked the girl. “Why are you so carefully hiding other facts?”

“Because they are of concern only to myself—a secret which is mine, and mine alone.”

“And it does not concern Mabel?” she demanded.

“No,” I replied hoarsely, “except that her acquaintance with the Professor has placed a new phase upon the mystery. Tell me all that happened concerning that note.”

“It came about eleven o’clock in the morning,” she said. “I saw a telegraph-boy come up the steps, and believed he had a message from you. Annie took the note and brought it here into the dining-room, where Mabel signed for it. She read it through, and I saw that it caused her a great shock of surprise. Her hands were trembling. I inquired what was the matter, but she made some evasive reply. I demanded to know whom it was from, and she replied that her correspondent’s name was Greer. ‘He ought never to have written to me,’ she added. ‘Men are sometimes most injudicious.’ Then she rose and placed the letter in the flames, watching it until it had been burned.”

“And is that all?” I demanded, astounded at the girl’s story.

“Yes, except that for some hours afterwards she seemed very upset. To me it appeared as though she had received word of some unusual occurrence. At noon she called a taxi by telephone, and went out. She did not return for luncheon, so I was alone. At three she came back, and I saw that she looked pale and distressed, while her eyes were red, as though she had been crying. But I attributed that to our ignorance of where you were. You know, Harry, how upset she is if when you are away you don’t write or wire to her every day,” added the girl.

The story held me utterly speechless. That Mabel was acquainted in secret with the Professor astounded me. But it had been the false Professor who had written to her. Possibly the fellow was already in London while I was searching for him in Glasgow, and, if so, what was more probable than that she should have met him by appointment?

Not one single instant did I doubt Mabel’s truth and love. If she had met this impostor, then she had been the victim of some cleverly-planned plot. I was incensed only against the perpetrators of that foul crime in Sussex Place, not against the sweet, soft-spoken woman who was so near my heart. Mabel was my wife, my love, my all-in-all.

Poor Gwen, watching my face intently, believed that she had acted as a sneak towards her sister, but I quickly reassured her that it was not so. Her revelations had sent my thoughts into a different channel.

“The telegram summoning her to Italy came after her return?” I asked.

“Yes, she was upset, and would eat no tea,” the girl answered. “Her conversation was all the time of you. ‘Harry is in danger,’ she said several times. ‘Something tells me that he is in the greatest danger.’ Then, when the message came, she became almost frantic in her anxiety for your welfare, saying, ‘Did I not tell you so? My husband is in peril. He is the victim of a plot!’”

“You never heard her speak of the Professor before?” I inquired.

“Never, Harry; and, truth to tell, I was surprised that she should receive a letter from a man who she admitted to me was unknown to you.”

“She told you that?” I cried.

“She said that you were not acquainted with the Professor, and that you might object to him writing to her, if you knew.”

“Then she was in fear of discovery, eh?” I asked in a husky voice.

“Yes,” faltered the girl. “It—it almost seemed as though she was. But really, Harry, I—I know I’ve done wrong to tell you all this. I—I’m quite ashamed of myself. But it is because I am in such great fear that something has happened to my sister.”

“You have done quite right, Gwen,” I assured her. “The circumstances have warranted your outspokenness. Some men might perhaps misjudge their wives in such a case, but I love Mabel, and she loves me. Therefore I will believe no ill of her. She is the innocent victim of a plot, and by Heaven!” I cried fiercely, “while I live I’ll devote my whole life to its exposure, and to the just punishment of any who have dared to harm her!”

Chapter Twenty.

One Traveller Returns.

One fact was quite plain. It was the false Professor who had written to my wife. For aught I knew, the man whom I had followed from Edinburgh to Glasgow might have already been in London, and she might have met him by appointment.

During the morning I took the “forty-eight,” and ran over to Regent’s Park, passing slowly before both front and back of the house in Sussex Place. The blinds were up, but from the condition of the doorsteps it was plain that the place was tenantless.

From the “London Directory” I obtained the number of Lady Mellor’s, in Upper Brook Street, and called. The fat butler told me that Morgan, Miss Greer’s maid, had left with her mistress, and as far as he knew was down at Broadstairs with her. Her ladyship was at Bordighera.

I inquired if he knew anything of the other servants at Professor Greer’s.

“No, nothing,” was the man’s answer. “At least, nothing except that the Professor went abroad suddenly, and that they were all discharged and given wages in lieu of notice.”

“That Italian fellow discharged them, didn’t he?” I asked.

“Yes, sir. I never liked him. He’s gone abroad with his master, they say, and they’ve left a caretaker in charge.”

“Oh, there is someone there, eh?”

“Yes, a policeman named Murphy and his wife. They used to take care of this house for her ladyship, and Miss Ethelwynn has now given her father’s house over to them. They’re a very steady pair, and live on the premises.”

Surely it was a master-stroke of the girl’s to give over to the police that house of tragedy! Why was she concealing the fact of her father’s death?

I drove back to Chiswick with that one thought uppermost in my mind.

That afternoon I sat in my own office trying to attend to the details of a business too long neglected, and listening mechanically to Pelham, to Dick Drake, and to the others in my employment, who were complaining of the unsatisfactory trials of a new car I had recently purchased.

Professor Greer was dead, and every trace of the crime removed, save for those grim, indisputable relics which I had recovered from the ashes and now held most sacred. But further, my dear wife, whose knowledge of the impostor was so amazing, was also missing.

The one point which, I confess, caused me some qualms, was the reason why, not discovering me, she had not telegraphed to Gwen. That, surely, would be her first thought. If she had missed me, she would surely have let either Gwen or Pelham know.

Hence I could only think that she had either fallen into some fatal trap—and there are many in the by-ways of certain Continental cities—or else she was forcibly held from communicating with the outer world. If so, by whom? Probably by the Professor’s false friend, Kershaw Kirk.

I could not put away from my mind the curious altitude of Hamilton Flynn. Why had he endeavoured to frighten me from going to Scotland Yard? What motive had he in this? In what manner was he assisting his friend, Leonard Langton?

Again, was Langton in ignorance of the Professor’s end, or had he knowledge of it, and was it by his persuasion that his beloved was so cleverly feigning ignorance of all the past?

I began to suspect that these two men, bosom chums that they were, had some hidden motive for concealing the Professor’s death. Yet, after all, the point most amazing was the reason why, in the face of facts now revealed, my mysterious neighbour should have taken such pains to reveal the truth to me.

That evening, after a hasty meal at home with Gwen, I went back to the garage, put on a greasy engineer’s suit which I sometimes wore when doing dirty work around the cars, and buttoned over it a frayed tweed coat belonging to one of the men. Then, with a cap on and a pipe in my mouth, I went forth, and made my way on the top of a motor-’bus to the corner of Wimpole Street.

If Flynn went out I intended to watch his proceedings, for though I entertained only a vague suspicion of Langton, yet I felt confident that his friend was not acting squarely.

Have you ever been seized with misgivings of a person whom you have no just cause to doubt? Is not such a feeling the result of some unseen evil influence radiating from the person suspected—often quite rightly?

My first impression of this specialist in diseases of the throat and nose was a bad one.

Therefore, I strolled up the long, eminently respectable street, crossing Wigmore Street and Queen Anne Street, until a few doors on the left before coming into Great Marylebone Street, I halted before the house wherein the pair shared chambers.

There were bright lights in their big sitting-room on the first floor, the room wherein Flynn had made those covert threats. It was then half-past eight. They would have dined by that hour, and if they were going out they would certainly very soon make an appearance.

I strolled to the corner of Great Marylebone Street, and idled at the corner, watching. The evening was bright and cold, and many cabs were passing and repassing. I lit my pipe, and sauntered up and down, my eye ever upon the front door of the house wherein the two men lived.

The time hung heavily, as it ever does when one is watching. An hour dragged by, but no one came out. At last, however, a maid ran up the area steps and came in my direction with a letter in her hand ready for posting in the pillar-box near which I was standing.

As she stopped I spoke to her, but at first she hesitated to answer. After slipping five shillings into her hand, however, I induced her to tell me that the doctor had dined alone, and was sitting upstairs. Mr Langton had, she said, left London early in the afternoon, but she was unaware of where he had gone.

“Tell me,” I asked the girl, “do they ever have a visitor named Kirk?”

“Kirk!” she echoed. “Oh, yes, I recollect, ’e used to often call, but of late ’e ’asn’t been.” And she described my mysterious neighbour exactly.

“When did he last call?” I asked.

“Oh, I should say it ’ud be quite a month ago. ’E always used to arsk for the doctor.”

“Never for Mr Langton?”

“Not to my knowledge. Indeed, one afternoon when ’e called I told ’im that the doctor was out, but that Mr Langton was at ’ome; but ’e told me that ’e wished to see the doctor an’ nobody else.”

“How long has Doctor Flynn lived there?” I inquired.

“About nine months.”

“Does he have many callers?”

“No; they all go round to ’is consulting room in ’Arley Street, I believe.”

“All except Kirk.”

“Yes, Mr Kirk used to call at all hours, and they used to sit together arf through the night sometimes—after Mr Langton ’ad gone to bed. ’E’s never up very late, ’e ain’t.”

And then, after a few more questions, I allowed the cockney girl to return to the house, first, however, impressing upon her the need for secrecy, and adding another five shillings to that I had already given her.

Half an hour later I saw the front door open, and Flynn, in dark overcoat and hard felt hat, ran down the steps and turned towards Oxford Street.

Soon I was at his heels. He presently turned into Wigmore Street, crossed Cavendish Square, and continued through Mortimer Street into Wells Street, quite unconscious of being followed. He walked with an air of preoccupation, twice stopping to light his cigarette.

Now that he was under my observation I did not intend that he should escape me. Besides, there was nothing suspicious about me, for I was merely a plain motor-mechanic, such as is seen about the London streets in dozens at all hours.

Continuing down Wardour Street he came into Coventry Street, where he ascended the carpeted stairs to a saloon well known to a certain class of the habitués of the West End. In my mechanic’s clothes I knew that the uniformed janitor at the bottom of the stairs would direct me to the public bar, therefore I was compelled to remain outside and await the doctor’s exit.

The place was evidently crowded, as it usually is, for it is one of the recognised nocturnal rendezvous in the neighbourhood of Leicester Square.

I crossed the road and stood near the entrance to the Motor Club, of which I was a member. Many men I knew passed and repassed within its swing doors, but none recognised me. Therefore I was quite satisfied that, with my dirty face, Doctor Flynn would not easily identify me.

At last he came forth, and alone.

I saw by his hesitation on the kerb that he was disappointed. Someone he had expected had not turned up, and he was now undecided in which direction to walk.

It was then about half-past ten, the quietest hour of the evening in that neighbourhood, yet the illuminated signs lent an air of gaiety to that scene so typical of London as the middle-class know it.

Having lit a cigarette the doctor strolled down the Haymarket, and turning up Charles Street, passed the “Junior,” crossed St. James’s Square, where he entered the “Sports,” made inquiry for someone, but found the person was not in. Then, continuing his way—while I walked at a respectable distance behind—he turned into Duke Street, where at a door about half-way up he paused and tugged at a bell.

I took careful note of that door, one with a semi-circular fanlight above and a painted number, and then turned quickly on my heel to avoid passing him as he stood in my way upon the pavement.

He was admitted and the door was closed. Then I passed the house, and saw that it was a good-sized one, probably let in sets of chambers, as are many of the houses in that vicinity.

I walked on to Jermyn Street and stood at the corner, lighting my pipe. A white-faced man passed—a wretched, decrepit old fellow whose hollow cough told its own tale, and who offered me matches. I bought a box, and began to chat with him. All loafers are fond of a gossip, and I did this in order not to appear to the watchful constable, who was trying the locked doors of shops in the vicinity, that I was loitering. A well-dressed man may linger as long as he likes, but one who appears as a mechanic, or as a shabby idler, is very soon moved on unless he, in turn, is, a “nark,” or police-informer.

The old man related to me a pitiable story of misfortune which might or might not be true, but it served to while away the time, while I, on my part, kept an ever-watchful vigilance upon the door just down the street.

I must have been there nearly an hour, for the traffic at the end of the street in Piccadilly had awakened, and every moment the lights of hansoms and taxis were flitting past. The theatres were just over, and the pleasure-seekers were already westward bound.

At length, just as I had grown inexpressibly weary, the door I was watching reopened, and from it emerged Flynn, accompanied by a man in evening dress with a white muffler around his neck and wearing a crush-hat—a man whom, in an instant, I recognised as Leonard Langton.

He blew a whistle for a taxi; but, seeing their intention was to drive away, I sped along into Piccadilly, and, finding one, gave the man swift instructions to wait until they entered a conveyance, and then to follow them.

The driver, noticing my clothes, looked askance at me, but I added:

“They owe me some money for work done on a car, and I mean to see where they go.”

There is a clannishness about motor-men, therefore the instant I had told my story he declared himself ready to assist me.

And as I sat back in the cab Langton and his friend, who had now gained Piccadilly, passed in search of a cab.

In a few moments they found one, and soon we had turned the corner of St. James’s Street, and were running down to Pall Mall, where we turned to the left, and after a sharp drive, swung into the station yard at Charing Cross.

Here the pair alighted, and, watching, I saw them stroll upon the arrival platform where, according to the chalked figures on the board, the boat-train from the Continent, already over an hour late, was now expected.

The usual crowd was waiting there, friends of passengers, porters, Customs officers, and the women agents of the various female rescue societies—an expectant crowd which, year in, year out, never differs.

The pair halted in earnest conversation about half-way along the platform, while I strolled slowly at some distance away, with my eyes upon them.

Flynn was arguing something, emphasising his words with his hands, while Langton stood by listening in silence.

Then there was the sudden movement of the porters who had noticed some signal fall, and looking towards the dark bridge I saw the headlight of the engine slowly approaching.

The doctor raised his finger to his friend, an action expressive of an injunction of silence.

Whom were they expecting to arrive?

With bated breath I stood motionless, watching in eager wonder.

From the arrival, whoever it might be, these men intended to preserve some secret.

Chapter Twenty One.

I Make a Bold Move.

For a moment I lost the two men in the excited crowd of alighting passengers, but when I gained another sight of them, my heart stood still.

Talking with the pair was a well set-up, alert man whose back was turned to me—a man in a soft grey felt hat and heavy travelling coat with beaver collar. Both men were speaking quickly, eagerly, telling the new-comer something of an urgent nature, being hustled at the same time by the bustling passengers eager to claim their luggage from the Customs barriers, and get away.

I moved a little distance along, recognising in the man just returned from the Continent the grey, thin, sinister face of Kershaw Kirk.

My first impulse was to rush forward and demand of him the truth; indeed, to charge him with a secret crime, and to insist on knowing the whereabouts of my beloved Mabel. But it struck me at that instant that the two men who had met him had agreed between themselves upon a course of secrecy, and that they were therefore misleading him. Had not Ethelwynn already told me of Langton’s suspicion of this man, who was to me and mine such a mystery?

Therefore I held back for the moment, awaiting my opportunity.

Standing beyond the barrier where the baggage was being sorted, ready for the Customs examinations, I watched the trio from my unseen point of vantage. I doubt that either would have recognised me in those greasy mechanic’s clothes of mine.

Within myself I felt a sense of complete satisfaction. Kirk had returned to England, and was therefore now within the jurisdiction of the law, however much he might pretend to be immune from its penalties.

What Flynn was saying evidently caused him to hesitate. He was thoughtful for a single moment, but next second shrugged his shoulders, with a gesture of disregard.

A taxi drew up close to where I stood, and I engaged him, telling him to wait. To my satisfaction I saw it was the same driver who had brought me along from Piccadilly.

Then, as I watched, I saw something which caused me to reflect. A porter, quickly recognising Kirk, took from him his baggage ticket and foraged out a big, battered kit-bag which had been placed upon the bench ready for the argus eye of his Majesty’s Customs. The porter uttered a word to the revenue officer and pointed to the bag, whereupon the officer chalked it without opening it.

Kirk’s name, it seemed, was as a laisser-passer at Charing Cross. Who was this man that his belongings should be exempt from Customs’ examination?

He looked much travel-worn, yet presented the same active, alert figure that I had seen passing and repassing before my house. No longer shabby or down-at-heel, however, he had, on the contrary, looked beaming and prosperous until those two men had imparted the information which had, in an instant, caused his brow to cloud, and he became serious and pensive.

The old brown kit-bag bearing many hotel labels was placed upon a taxi, which the three men entered and drove away, I following close upon them.

Half-way up St. James’s Street they pulled up at Boodle’s, where all three entered. Which of the three, I wondered, was a member of that most exclusive and old-fashioned institution?

They remained there nearly half an hour, when Kirk emerged, and, bidding good night to his friends at the kerb, re-entered the taxi and drove to Whitehall Court, that large block of flats which overlooks the embankment close to Northumberland Avenue. Here the liveried porter saluted him respectfully and carried his bag to the lift, up which a few minutes later he disappeared.

In my mechanic’s attire I was now placed at a great disadvantage. Any inquiry I might make of the gorgeous attendant would, I knew, only arouse suspicion, but a thought instantly occurred to me. The friendly driver of my taxi, believing that I, a motor man, had been swindled, might perhaps help me. We had pulled up at the corner where, in a few brief sentences, I now explained to him that I was anxious to know whether Kirk resided there in his own name.

“I’ll inquire for you, mate, if you like,” declared the taxi-driver cheerily. “You just wait here.”

And while I mounted guard over his cab, the red-moustached driver went along to the entrance to the flats. I saw him in conversation with the lift man, and when presently he returned he said:

“The gentleman just gone in is Mr Seymour, who lives on the third floor. He’s abroad very often, it seems, and is only just back. He’s lived there a couple of years.”

Now I recollected that Kirk, when we had sat together that first night in Bedford Park, had told me that he possessed another home, and I had now run him to earth.

Whitehall Court is an expensive place of residence. Apartments there seemed far beyond his income as he appeared when he passed my house, shabby, broken-down, and often hungry-looking.

I gave my friend the taxi-man half a crown beyond his legal fare and dismissed him, afterwards walking as far as the entrance to the National Liberal Club, trying to decide how next to act.

To face the fellow boldly and unflinchingly was, I recognised, the only way in which to gain the knowledge I sought. Yet in the garb of a mechanic, was I not much handicapped? Nevertheless, I walked back, and, finding the hall-porter, gave my name as Flynn, and asked to see Mr Seymour upon important business.

After a wait of nearly ten minutes a man in uniform came and ushered me up in the lift to the third floor, where, having traversed a long, thickly-carpeted corridor, he opened a door and allowed me to pass across the small well-furnished hall of the flat into a sitting-room, where I found myself again face to face with my mysterious neighbour.

He started at sight of me, but so perfect an actor was he that in a second he had recovered himself, and inquired with affected friendliness:

“Why, my dear Holford, why in the name of Fate did you send up your name as Flynn?”

“Because I wished to see you, Mr Kirk,” was my hard response, for we were now alone together in that cosy, sumptuously-furnished sitting-room, through the windows of which I could see the dark flowing Thames and the row of gleaming lights on the Surrey shore beyond. “I knew,” I added, “that if I had sent up my own name I should not be received.”

“Why?” he asked, opening his eyes widely. “I don’t follow you. Surely you have acted as a good friend to me, therefore why shouldn’t I receive you? I’ve only this very moment returned from abroad. Who told you I was back again?”

“No one. I obtained the knowledge for myself,” I said, “and I have come here, Mr Kirk, for several reasons, the chief being to ask you a simple and pointed question: who killed Professor Greer?”

“My dear sir,” he exclaimed, looking straight at me with unwavering gaze, a slight change, however, showing in his thin, grey countenance, “that is the very problem that I myself am trying to solve—but in vain.”

“An impostor is passing himself off as Greer,” I declared.

“Is he?” asked Kirk quietly. “I was not aware of that.”

“Not aware of it!” I cried in angry dismay. “Do you actually deny, then, that you are acquainted with this man who has taken the personality and honours of Professor Greer upon himself in order to preserve the secret of the unfortunate scientist’s death?”

“I deny being aware of any person attempting to pass himself off as Greer,” was my mysterious neighbour’s bold and unflinching reply.

Had I not sent that telegram from Broadstairs and signed it Kirk, and had not its receipt caused the false Professor quickly to change his quarters? Kirk’s reply staggered me.

“Look here,” I exclaimed again, raising my voice in anger at this open denial of what I knew to be the truth, “on the night of your escape from Sussex Place, the house was searched, and I found evidences of all traces of the crime having been effaced in the furnace of the laboratory.”

“I know,” was his simple response. “I was quite well aware of that. I hope, however, Holford, that you have kept your promise and kept a still tongue.”

“To a certain extent, yes.”

“You told Langton nothing, I trust?” he asked anxiously.

“Why are you in such mortal fear of Langton?” I demanded hotly, halting before him as he stood on the hearthrug coolly surveying me, with his back to the fire.

“My dear fellow,” he answered, “pray calm yourself. Have a drink, and let’s discuss this matter amicably from a purely business-like standpoint. Surely when I invoked your aid I did not commit a grave error of judgment? You have been judicious throughout, I hope? You have not forgotten the great issues which I explained depended upon your silence?”

“My silence you shall command no longer, Mr Kirk!” I cried, suddenly interrupting him. “I’ve been silent far too long.”

“Ah!” he remarked, still unruffled. “I see. Well, your attitude is quite justifiable, my dear sir—quite. You have lost your wife, I understand.”

“Yes,” I said, advancing towards him a couple of paces in a manner which I now believe must have appeared threatening. “And you know more about the trap into which my poor wife has been led than anybody else. That is why I’m here to-night—to compel you to speak—you crafty old cur!”

“My dear Holford, why—what’s the matter?” he asked, even then quite unperturbed. “Now if I did not know you so well I might easily be annoyed, but I’m not. No doubt the loss of Mrs Holford has seriously upset you.” And the fellow actually smiled at this.

I grew furious. The mysterious man’s eyes gleamed with a triumphant light, and his pale lips parted, revealing his pointed teeth.

“You make pretence of ignorance!” I cried. “You think that I believe you when you say you know nothing of where she is, but—”

“I assure you, Holford, that these suspicions of myself are entirely groundless. I have no knowledge whatever of the lady. I have seen her once or twice at her dining-room window, it is true.”

“And yet I’ve been out to Florence, to the Grand Bretagne, where I was informed that you had been in her company!” was my hasty reply.

“I can’t help what cock-and-bull story you’ve been told by an Italian hotel-keeper. They are notorious for their untruths, as you would discover if you travelled as much up and down Italy as I do,” he said with an evil grin. “I can only tell you, once and for all, that I have no knowledge whatever of your wife’s present whereabouts.”

“Then who has?”

“How can I tell, my dear sir? You ask me a riddle. On my arrival at Charing Cross an hour ago one of my friends who met me told me of Mrs Holford’s sudden journey abroad and her disappearance into space. The story set me wondering as to the motive of the plot—for plot it undoubtedly must be. Mrs Holford and yourself, I am told, are devoted to each other. There is no reason for her leaving you, is there?”

“Understand this, Kirk,” I said. “I’ve been fooled quite long enough. As my wife has been enticed away, and is held aloof in some unknown place, I give you full and ample warning of my intention. It is to go straight to the police, and while invoking their aid to try and find her, at the same time to tell them the whole story of the affair at Sussex Place, just as I know it.”

The man half turned from me and bit his thin under-lip. His grey, furrowed countenance had become even more grey and more determined, while in his eyes I saw an evil glitter.

“Ah! You’ve been trying to seek solution of the mystery for yourself. I know all about that!” He laughed hollowly. “But, as you are aware of only half the tangled skein of mysterious facts, it is hardly likely that you’ll succeed, do you think? Did I not tell you to remain silent and inactive? Instead of that, you’ve been chattering and trying to act the part of amateur detective. It was fatal. Because of that—and for that reason alone—the misfortune has been placed upon you.”

“What misfortune?”

“The loss of your wife. It has occupied your mind in another way, just as it was intended by your enemies it should do.”

“And yours is the master mind, Mr Kirk, which has planned this subtle revenge,” I exclaimed, my eager hands clenched in frantic desperation. “Because I disobeyed your extraordinary injunctions Mabel has been taken from me. You may as well admit the whole truth now at once.”

“I admit nothing,” he answered, drawing himself up defiantly.

“Then, by Heaven, I’ll force you to speak—to tell me where she is!” I shouted, as I raised my hands with a sudden movement. And then, before he could ward me off, my fingers closed upon his hard, bony throat.

I was desperate. Nay, in the presence of that sphinx-like, taciturn adventurer whom I now knew to be my enemy, I was mad.

Yes, mad, or surely I would never have dared to lay hands upon him.

Chapter Twenty Two.

Defiance Proves Defence.

I had, I confess, allowed my anger to rise above my gorge. That action of mine in attacking Kirk was both ill-timed and very injudicious, for in an instant—before even those frantic words had left my lips—I found myself looking down the ugly black barrel of a big Browning revolver, that most effective and deadly of all man-killing weapons.

“Kindly release me, Holford,” he said, rather hoarsely and with some difficulty, as my muscular fingers had closed upon his scraggy throat. “Come, this is all very foolish! Let me go! I have no desire to harm you,” he added, quite calmly.

“Then tell me where I can find my wife,” I repeated.

“I would—if I could.”

“Tell me who can!” I demanded fiercely, my fingers still closed upon his throat, so that he breathed only with great difficulty.

“Give me time—time to make—inquiry!” he gasped. “I’ve only just returned, and am in ignorance of a great deal of what has transpired.”

“Upon your own admission, Mabel has fallen a victim of a plot merely because I became too active and too inquisitive. You feared lest I might discover something.”

“I have admitted nothing, my dear sir!” he cried. “One day you will withdraw all these malicious words—mark me,” he added, in a hard voice, lowering his weapon and replacing it in his hip-pocket as I released my convulsive grip.

“I’ve lost my wife, Mr Kirk, and you know where she is,” I said.

“In that you are quite mistaken,” he declared. “As I’ve already explained, I’ve not yet had opportunity for making inquiry. I believed,” he added in reproach, “that you would assist me in this strange affair concerning Professor Greer. Yet my confidence in you, Holford, has been sadly misplaced. Recall for one moment what I told you—of the seriousness of what was at stake, and of the absolute necessity for complete secrecy. Yet to-night you threaten to bungle the whole affair by going to the police.”

“I’ve lost my wife!” I interrupted. “She’s the victim of some plot or other, and it is to find her that I intend to invoke the aid of Scotland Yard.”

“Well, by adopting that course, you would not find her—but you’d lose her,” was the old fellow’s brief response.

“Antonio told me the very same thing when we met in Rome!” I exclaimed. “Your threat shows me that you are in league in this conspiracy of silence.”

Kershaw Kirk burst out laughing, as though he considered my anger a huge joke. It annoyed me that he did not take me seriously, and that he regarded the loss of Mabel so lightly.

“Look here, Mr Holford,” he said at last, looking straight into my face. “It’s plain that you suspect me of being the assassin of Professor Greer. That being so, I’ve nothing more to say. Yet I would ask you to regard the present situation both logically and calmly. Do you for one moment suppose that were I guilty I would have taken you to Sussex Place and explained the whole affair in detail? Is it, indeed, to be supposed that I would place myself so entirely and completely in the hands of a stranger?”

I shook my head dubiously.

“Well,” he went on, “I repeat to you now all that I told you that night, and assert that all I told you was the truth.”

“But how do you account for Ethelwynn being still alive?” I interrupted quickly.

“There is an explanation of that,” he declared; “one that you will probably be told very shortly. Fortunately, the poor girl was not dead, though I confess I was entirely deceived by the symptoms. You will remember that the mirror remained unclouded by her breath?”

“I remember every incident, alas! only too vividly,” was my slow, distinct reply. “But,” I asked very pointedly, “pray tell me, Mr Kirk, what was your object in calling upon me and inducing me to go to Sussex Place?”

He thrust his hands into his trousers pockets and smiled.

“An ulterior one—as you may imagine. But one which was as much in your interests as in ours.”

“Ours!” I echoed. “You mean you and your accomplices?”

“Call them so, if you wish,” he laughed. “I, unfortunately, am not in a position to enlighten you upon the actual reason I invoked your aid.”

“And your action has only brought upon me a great misfortune—bitter despair, and the loss of the woman I loved!” I cried, dismayed.

“Ah!” he said. “You judge me a little too hastily, Mr Holford. It is your failing, Mr Holford, that you are given to rushing to premature conclusions. That is always fatal in any delicate negotiation. When you’ve had my experience—that of a traveller and thorough-going cosmopolitan—you will learn how to repress your own opinions until they are fully and entirely corroborated.”

I looked into the grey face of the clever adventurer, and there saw craft, cunning, and an ingenuity that was superhuman. A look was in his eyes such as I had never before seen in those of any human being.

“But I am in search of my wife!” I cried frantically. “I am in no mood to hear this philosophy of yours.”

“Well—how do you know she is not here—in London?” he asked, waving his thin hand towards the window where showed the glimmering lights of the Thames bank.

To the right, where I stood, I could see the gleam of electric light from the summit of Big Ben, showing that the House, which had assembled only a few days before, was sitting late after the Christmas recess.

“I suppose you wish to mislead me into the idea that she is back again in London, hiding from me, eh?” I exclaimed resentfully. “No, Mr Kirk, I tell you plainly that I’ve had enough of this tragic-comedy of yours, I’ve watched you this evening with your precious friends, Flynn and Langton.”

“And, pray, why should I not possess friends?” he asked, looking at me with some surprise.

“To me Langton denied all knowledge of you.”

“Well—and am I to be blamed for Langton’s pretended ignorance?”

“No; but it shows me that you are not dealing with me in a straightforward manner!” I declared, without mincing words.

But the strange old fellow only laughed. “My dear sir,” he said a few moments afterwards, “I can quite understand your distrust of me, therefore it is as well that I hesitated to place a further confidence in you. You might have betrayed it.”

“Betrayed it!” I echoed angrily. “Have you not betrayed me? Is it not due to you, and you alone, that my wife is missing?”

“That I emphatically deny, my dear sir,” he replied, still quite unperturbed. “But why let us discuss it? Any denial of mine you’ll regard as false. It’s a great pity that my judgment led me to seek your aid. Had you carried out my request and refrained from prying into matters which did not concern you, you might have found it to your distinct advantage.”

“You mean that I should have profited pecuniarily by concealing the fact that Professor Greer is dead and that an impostor has assumed his identity? You intended that I also should be an accomplice of the assassin!”

“No—not exactly,” he replied with an evil, triumphant grin. “But, really, my dear sir,” he added, “I’ve had a very long journey, and I’m tired. Is it any use prolonging this argument?”

“Not unless you wish!” I snapped. “I have given you full warning of my intention to reveal the whole affair to the police.”

“Ah! Then that will be very unfortunate—for you,” replied the queer old man; “and for your wife most of all.”

“Yes, I know. You intend to bring disaster upon me and upon her if I dare to go to Scotland Yard!” I cried.

In my ignorance of the truth I believed my threats would be of avail. Ah, had I but known the actual facts, how differently would I have acted! But surely that enigma was one that was beyond human power to elucidate. Upon every hand I found complications. Plot lay within plot—all directed against myself and against poor innocent Mabel, who had flown to me on receipt of what she had believed to be my urgent telegram.

“My intentions, Mr Holford, entirely depend upon your actions,” said Kirk, very plainly. “If you are foolish—well, then I cannot guarantee the safety of your wife. My advice to you, however, is to recall all I told you, believe in the truth of my statements, and act with slow discretion.”

“But my wife?” I cried. “I must—I will save her. She is in peril, I am sure of that!”

“She may be in grave peril if you go to the police,” he said enigmatically; “and, believe me, they cannot assist us in the least to discover who killed Professor Greer.”

“Why?”

Kirk hesitated. In that pause I scented an intention further to prevent me from speaking.

“Well, regard the matter calmly and without prejudice,” he said at last. “As a matter of fact, what evidence is there that the Professor is dead?”

“Evidence!” I cried. “Why, did not you and I see him dead? Did not his daughter stand before his lifeless body?”

“Ah, she would never tell what she saw!” he said, with a mysterious smile.

“Why not?” I asked, much surprised at his remark.

But my mysterious neighbour only shrugged his shoulders vaguely, answering:

“There is a reason why she will never admit his death—a strong reason.”

“Well,” I said, “I recovered from the ashes of the furnace certain remains—coat buttons and other scraps of clothing.”

“And you think they would be accepted as evidence that Professor Greer was done to death?” he laughed. “You are evidently unaware of the great caution exercised by the Criminal Investigation Department in accepting any evidence such as that which you could furnish. No,” he added, “only Antonio and Ethelwynn were the actual witnesses, in addition to ourselves, of the Professor’s tragic end. And as they refuse to admit that he is dead, any information you may lodge at Scotland Yard must only reflect upon yourself and bring greater peril upon Mrs Holford. I simply tell you the truth—believe me, or believe me not.”

“Well,” I exclaimed, “I disbelieve you, Mr Kirk.”

“Then I wish you good evening!” he exclaimed abruptly. “Act as you think proper!” he added defiantly, as, turning from me in disregard he walked to his large writing-table, where he took up some letters, at the same time singing, with that careless cosmopolitan air of his, Lucien Fugere’s popular chanson, which at the moment one heard everywhere in the streets of Paris.

“Then that’s your last word, eh, Mr Kirk?”

I asked when he had concluded the verse.

“It is,” he replied determinedly. “If you must act as a fool, then I can’t assist you further. Good night!” And he sat down and busied himself with his accumulated correspondence.

I now realised that he was utterly defiant, and thoughts of my loss of Mabel caused my blood to boil within me. His light, careless manner irritated me beyond measure.

“Very well,” I cried. “Good night, Mr Kirk!” And turning swiftly upon my heel, I left the room and found my way down the great staircase and out into Whitehall.

Too late at that hour to call at New Scotland Yard, close by, I hailed a hansom and drove straight home, almost beside myself with rage at the calm, unruffled, defiant attitude with which the adventurer had met me.

Next morning, after writing some letters, I went round to the garage, where I found Pelham, somewhat excited.

“This morning, when I arrived at eight o’clock,” he said. “I found awaiting me a rather shabbily-dressed old man who said he wanted to see an Eckhardt tyre. Recollecting my previous experiences of people who’ve come in to handle them, I told him that if he wished to buy one I could sell him one, but I hadn’t time to waste on sightseers. Whereupon the old fellow promptly paid for a cover before seeing it, and took it away on a cab which he had waiting.”

“Well?” I asked, rather, surprised. “And who was he?”

“That’s the curious point. He was an old chap I’ve seen about the neighbourhood many times—thin, rather shabby and disreputable, grey hair and moustache—lives in your road, I think. Drake says you know him.”

“Kershaw Kirk!” I gasped.

“Yes; that’s the name Drake said before he went out with the ‘sixty,’” replied my manager.