The Red Room
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.
“What does he want with a tyre when he hasn’t got a car?”
I stood in silence. What, indeed, did that man want with one of the new tyres? Had he merely come down there to have further words with me, or did he require a cover for some specific purpose?
My mind, however, was made up. I had resolved to go to New Scotland Yard, and, even though tardily, to place the whole of the facts before the Criminal Investigation Department. Therefore I got out the “forty-eight” and drove along the Hammersmith Road and Knightsbridge, across St. James’s Park, and through Storey’s Gate to Whitehall. I alighted in the big courtyard of the police headquarters, where a number of motor-’buses were drawn up for inspection, and entered the large stone hall, when a constable came forward to inquire my business.
I handed him my card, explaining that I wished to see one of the detective inspectors upon a confidential matter, and was shown upstairs and along a wide corridor to a bare waiting-room.
For some ten minutes I remained there, when the door opened, and I found myself face to face with a middle-aged, pleasant-faced man, who was one of the most noted and experienced officers of the department.
For a moment I held my breath. I recollected all the threats that had been made of Mabel’s peril if I dared to speak the truth.
The detective-inspector closed the door behind him, and, wishing me a polite “Good morning,” inquired my business.
I told him. Yes; I blurted forth the truth, and made a clean breast of the whole matter.
But the instant I had done so I bitterly repented it.
I realised something which I had not before recognised.
I saw that, even though my dear wife were missing and in peril, I was a fool – an utter idiot – for having dared to breathe a word.
My injudicious statement had only rendered the enigma still more complicated than hitherto.
Chapter Twenty Three
The Unexpected Happens
The shrewd officer seated at the table with me, a pen in his hand, heard my narrative to the end, now and then making brief memoranda.
Presently he exclaimed:
“Would you kindly excuse me? I’d like another gentleman to hear this story.” And he rose and left.
A few minutes later he returned with a rather taller, clean-shaven man, slightly younger, who had on a dark overcoat and carried a silk hat in his hand.
“This is Mr Holford,” said the first officer, introducing me. “He’s just told me a very remarkable story, which I’d like you to hear for a moment.”
Then, turning to me, he asked me to repeat briefly what I had alleged.
The new-comer, seating himself, listened attentively to every word which fell from my lips. I noticed that he exchanged curious glances with his brother officer.
“Your main reason, then, for telling us this story is in order to compel those responsible for your wife’s absence to reveal her whereabouts, I take it?” asked the younger man.
“Exactly.”
“The false telegram was dispatched from Turin, eh?”
“Yes. Cannot you communicate with the Italian police concerning it?”
“And pray what good would result?” he queried. “After long delay we might perchance get the original of the telegram, but I don’t see that that would assist us very far. When people send bogus messages they generally disguise their handwriting.”
“Well, I leave it to you to take what steps you like to assist me,” I said. “My sole object is to find my lost wife.”
“Naturally, my dear sir,” observed the officer. “We’ll first take down your statement in writing.” And then the man I had first seen wrote at my dictation a brief summary of the mysterious death of Professor Greer and its attendant complications and my suspicion of Kershaw Kirk.
“Well, we’ll place this before the Commissioner to-day. Perhaps you’ll call to-morrow; say about this time. We will then let you know our opinion and our intentions.”
With that I was compelled to be satisfied, and I left the waiting-room full of hope that by that bold move of mine I might gain knowledge of the whereabouts of my well-beloved.
How I existed throughout that day I cannot tell. I tried to attend to my business, but in vain. I was wondering what action was being taken by my sinister-faced neighbour who lived in Whitehall Court under another name, and who seemed to possess a dual personality.
At last the hour came when again I turned the car into Scotland Yard, and once more was ushered upstairs into that bare waiting-room wherein so many stories of crime are related.
Presently, after a lengthy wait, the two officers entered together and greeted me.
“Well,” commenced the elder of the pair with some slight hesitation, “we’ve placed your statement before the Commissioner, Mr Holford, and he has very carefully considered it. He has, however, decided that it is not a matter for our department.”
“What?” I gasped. “A man can be foully done to death here in London, and yet the police refuse to believe the story of an honest man – a man who is a witness!”
“We do not doubt you in the least degree, Mr Holford,” the other assured me, speaking very quietly.
“But you do!” I exclaimed in quick anger. “I’ve told you that a crime has been perpetrated.”
“My dear sir,” said the officer, “we get many startling stories told here almost hourly, and if we inquired into the truth of them all, why, we’d require a department as big as the whole of Whitehall.”
“What I told you yesterday is so strange and extraordinary that you believe I’m a madman,” I said. “I see it in your faces.”
“Excuse me, but that is not the point,” he protested. “We are only officers, Mr Holford. We are not the commander. The chief has given his decision, and we are compelled to obey, however much we may regret our inaction.”
“So you refuse your aid in assisting me to find my wife?”
“No. If we can help you to discover Mrs Holford, we willingly will. Perhaps you’ll kindly give us her description, and we’ll at once circulate it through all our channels, both here and abroad. But,” added the man, “I must first tell you that we can hold out very little hope. The number of missing wives reported to us, both here at headquarters and at the various local stations in the metropolitan area, is sometimes dozens in a day. Most of the ladies have, we find on inquiry, gone away of their own accord.”
“But this case is different. My wife has not!” I asserted. “She has been enticed away by a telegram purporting to come from me.”
“And that’s really nothing unusual. We have heard of ladies arranging with other people to send urgent messages in the names of their husbands. It is an easy way of escape sometimes.” And he smiled rather grimly.
“Then, to put it plainly, I’ve nothing to hope for from you?” I snapped.
“Very little, I fear, sir.”
“And this is our police system which was only recently so highly commended by the Royal Commission of Inquiry!” I blurted forth. “It’s a scandal!”
“It is not for us to make any comment, my dear Mr Holford,” said the elder of the two officers. “The Commissioner himself decides what action we take upon information we may receive. I dare say,” he added, “our decision in this case does appear to you somewhat strange, but – well, I may as well point out that there is a special feature in it which does not appear to you – an outsider.”
“What special feature can there be, pray? A well-known man has been assassinated. Surely, therefore, it is the duty of the police to stir themselves and make every inquiry!”
“We have only your statement for that. As far as we or the public are aware, Professor Greer is travelling somewhere on the Continent.”
“But, if you disbelieve me, go to Kershaw Kirk, in Whitehall Court, or to the Professor’s daughter down at Broadstairs, or to Pietro Merli, who keeps a newsagent’s in the Euston Road. Each of these persons knows the truth, and would speak – if compelled.”
“The Commissioner has had all those names before him, but in face of that he has decided not to enter into this matter. His decision,” said the officer, “is irrevocable.”
“Then our police system is a perfect farce!” I cried. “No wonder, indeed, we have in London a host of undiscovered crimes! The man Kirk laughed at you here as blunderers!” I added.
But the pair only exchanged glances and grinned, causing me increased anger.
“In any other city but London the police would, upon my information, at once institute inquiry!” I declared. “I’m a tax-payer, and am entitled to assistance and protection.”
“We have already offered to assist you to discover the whereabouts of Mrs Holford,” the elder man pointed out politely.
“Then inquire of this man Kirk, or Seymour, as he calls himself, in Whitehall Court,” I said. “He can tell you where she is – if he chooses.”
“You suspect him of having a hand in her disappearance? Why?” inquired the other detective officer.
I related clearly and succinctly the facts upon which my belief was based and of the description given of my wife’s companion by the hotel-manager in Florence.
The officer slowly shook his head.
“That’s scarcely conclusive, is it? The description is but a vague one, after all.”
“Well,” I said bitterly as I rose, “if you refuse to assist me, I must, I suppose, seek redress elsewhere. May I see the Commissioner myself?”
“You can make formal application, if you like. But I don’t expect he will see you. He has already fully considered the matter.” And that was all the satisfaction accorded me.
“Then I’ll do something!” I cried. “I’ll get a question asked in the House. It’s a scandal that, with Professor Greer killed in his own home, you refuse to bestir yourselves. After all, it seems quite true, as has been recently alleged, that the police are nowadays so fully occupied in regulating the speed of motor-cars that they have no time for the investigation of crime.”
I noticed that at my threat to have a question asked in the House, one of the officers pulled a rather wry face. The Metropolitan Police were not fond, I knew, of questions being put about them. I chanced to know rather intimately a member for a country division, though to get the question put would necessitate my explaining the whole affair.
Yet was not Mabel’s liberty – nay, perhaps her very life – at stake?
“You’ve told us very little regarding this friend of yours, Mr Kershaw Kirk, whom you appear to suspect so strongly,” the younger of the two men remarked at last. “Who is he?”
“An adventurer,” I replied quickly. “I have no doubt whatever upon that point.”
The man pursed his lips dubiously.
“May it not be that you are somewhat prejudiced against him?” he ventured to suggest.
“No. He was in the house at the time when the Professor’s body was cremated in his own furnace. If you went to Sussex Place you would probably discover some remains among the ashes.”
“Do you allege, then, that you were an actual witness of the cremation?” asked the officer.
“No; I found him in the house.”
“And, later on, you discovered the furnace alight, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Then it is only a surmise on your part, after all, my dear sir,” remarked the detective, twisting a pen between his fingers as his dark eyes were fixed upon mine. “The actual evidence is really nil. That is just the view taken by the Commissioner.”
“But my wife is in the hands of the assassins,” I cried. “You can’t deny that!”
“Is there any actual, evidence of it? None, as far as we can see,” he declared. “Would it not be natural for your wife, on failing to find you in Florence, either to wire to her sister at home or to return home at once? She did neither, which only goes far to prove that she did not desire to return to London.”
“You suggest that she has purposely left me?” I cried, staring at the man in a frenzy of angry resentment.
“I suggest nothing, Mr Holford. Pray don’t misunderstand me. I merely put before you the facts in order to obtain a logical conclusion. Only one can be arrived at – she had some motive for not returning to her home. If she had, then how are we to find her? She would, no doubt, purposely cover her tracks.”
“But she was with that man, the man who – ”
“And that just bears out my argument,” interrupted the detective.
“But may she not have been prevented from sending any message home?” I suggested, though that very point he had made had, I confess, been the one which had continually obsessed me.
Both the detectives shook their heads.
“No,” replied the elder of the two. “We are both agreed, as the Commissioner also believes, that your wife would not be held a prisoner. Criminals do not hold women prisoners nowadays, except in works of fiction. No,” he added, “depend upon it, Mr Holford, when you discover the truth, you will find that your wife was acquainted with one or other of these friends of yours, and that her disappearance was part of a plan.”
The story of the message received by Mabel while I was in Scotland flashed across my mind. I recollected all that Gwen had so guardedly related to me.
But I stirred myself quickly. No, a thousand times no! I would never believe evil of Mabel before I had absolute proof in black and white. The mystery of her disappearance was as great and inexplicable as the problem of who killed Professor Greer?
Chapter Twenty Four
Two Men Consult
Beside myself with fear and anxiety regarding the woman I loved so well, I again called that very same evening upon Kirk at Whitehall Court, but on doing so was informed by the lift man that he was out.
A suggestion then occurred to me that he might have gone over to his other abode at Bedford Park, therefore I returned, and at last knocked at his door.
His sister answered my summons, and saying that her brother was at home, ushered me into his presence.
I found him in his old velvet jacket seated in his high-backed arm-chair before a glowing fire, his pet parrot near him; and as I entered he greeted me coldly, without deigning to shake my hand.
“Well, Holford,” he exclaimed, stretching his slippered feet lazily towards the fire, “so you have, after all, proved a traitor, eh?”
“A traitor? How?” I asked, standing near the fireplace and facing him.
“You have been telling some extraordinary stories about me at Scotland Yard, I hear,” he said with a grin.
“Ah!” I cried. “Then you are a detective, after all? My surmise was right from the first!”
“No,” he replied very quietly, “you were quite wrong, my dear sir; I’m not a detective, neither professional nor amateur, nor have I anything whatever to do with Scotland Yard. They may be sad blunderers there, but they do not accept every cock-and-bull story that may be told them.”
“I told them no cock-and-bull story!” I protested angrily. “I told them the actual truth!”
“And that after all the warnings I have given you!” he said in a tone of bitterest reproach. “Ah! you are unaware of the extreme gravity of that act of yours. You have broken faith with me, Holford, and by doing so, have, I fear, brought upon me, as upon others, a great calamity.”
“But you are so mysterious. You have never been open and above-board with me!” I declared. “You are full of mystery.”
“Did I not tell you on the first evening you sat here with me that I was a dealer in secrets?” he asked, blowing a cloud of smoke from his cigar.
“No, Holford,” went on my mysterious neighbour, very seriously, “you are like most other men – far too inquisitive. Had you been able to repress your curiosity, and at the same time preserve your pledge of secrecy, matters to-day would have been vastly different, and, acting in concert, we might have been able to solve this extraordinary enigma of Professor Greer’s death. But now you’ve been and made all sorts of wild statements to the Commissioner of Police. Well, it has stultified all my efforts.”
He spoke with such an air of injured innocence that I hesitated whether I had not, after all, somewhat misjudged him. Yet as I looked into that grey, crafty face I could not help doubting him. It was true that he had taken me into his confidence, but was it not done only for his own ingenious and devilish purpose?
“My wife is lost,” I observed at last. “It is her loss that has, perhaps, led me to say more than I would otherwise have done.”
“And love for your wife makes you forget your word of honour given to me, eh?” he asked. “Your code of honour is distinctly peculiar, Mr Holford,” he added, with biting sarcasm. “I, of course, regret that Mrs Holford has fallen a victim to the machinations of our enemies, but surely even that is no excuse for a man to act treacherously towards his friend.”
“That is not the point,” I declared. “You have never satisfied me as to your motive in taking me to Sussex Place and exhibiting to me the evidence of the crime.”
“Because – well, because, had I done so, you would not have understood. Some day, perhaps, you will know; and when you learn the truth you will be even more astounded than you are to-day. Meanwhile, I can assure you that you suspect me entirely without cause.”
“Then why were you in the house at the time the traces of the crime were being effaced in the furnace?” I asked in a hard voice.
He hesitated for a moment, and I thought his bony hand trembled slightly.
“For reason’s of my own,” he replied at last. “You allowed me to wriggle out of a very tight corner, and I intended to show you my gratitude, had you given me an opportunity.”
“I desire no expression of gratitude, Mr Kirk,” I replied, with dignified disgust. “All I require is a statement from you concerning the whereabouts of my dear wife. Give me that, and I’m satisfied to retire from the whole affair altogether.”
“Because you have now realised that Scotland Yard refuse their assistance, eh?” he asked, with an evil grin. “Are you not now agreed with me that our much-praised Criminal Investigation Department, with all its hide-bound rules and its tangle of red-tape, is useless? It is not the men who are at fault – for some of them are the finest and best fellows in the whole metropolis – but the system which is radically wrong.”
I was bound, after my experience, to agree with him. But again I referred to Mabel, and to the manner in which she had been decoyed from home.
“You hear that, Joseph?” he exclaimed, turning to his feathered pet, who had been chatting and screeching as we had been speaking. “This gentleman suspects your master, Joseph. What do you say?”
“You’re a fool for your pains! You’re a fool for your pains!” declared the bird. “Poor Jo-sef! Poor Jo-sef wants to go to bed!”
“Be quiet! You’ll go to bed presently,” answered the queer, grey visaged, sphinx-like man, who, turning again towards me, and looking me straight in the face, once more assured me that I was foolish in my misapprehension of the truth.
“To me it really does not matter who killed Professor Greer, or who has usurped his place in the world of science,” I said. “My only aim now is to recover my lost wife. Antonio, when I met him in Rome, was anxious that, in exchange for information concerning her, I should consent to keep a still tongue as to what had occurred in Sussex Place.”
“Rubbish, my dear sir!” – and Kirk laughed heartily. “What can Antonio possibly know? He’s as ignorant and innocent of the whole affair as you are yourself.”
“How do you know that, pray?”
“Well, am I not endeavouring to elucidate the mystery?” he asked.
“And you know more than you will tell me?”
I said.
“Perhaps – just a little.”
“Yet you desire that I should still trust you implicitly, that I should give myself into your hands blindly and unreservedly – you, who lead this dual existence! In Whitehall Court you are a wealthy man of leisure, while here you pose as shabby and needy.”
