after a busy and sleepless night he came down to report to thechief commissioner the next morning. the evening newspaper billswere filled with the "chelsea sensation" but the information givenwas of a meagre character.
since fisher had disappeared, many of the details which could havebeen secured by the enterprising pressmen were missing. there wasno reference to the visit of mr. gathercole and in self-defencethe press had fallen back upon a statement, which at an earlierperiod had crept into the newspapers in one of those chattyparagraphs which begin "i saw my friend kara at giros" and endwith a brief but inaccurate summary of his hobbies. the paragraphhad been to the effect that mr. kara had been in fear of his lifefor some time, as a result of a blood feud which existed betweenhimself and another albanian family. small wonder, therefore, themurder was everywhere referred to as "the political crime of thecentury.""so far," reported t. x. to his superior, "i have been unable totrace either gathercole or the valet. the only thing we knowabout gathercole is that he sent his article to the times with hiscard. the servants of his club are very vague as to hiswhereabouts. he is a very eccentric man, who only comes inoccasionally, and the steward whom i interviewed says that itfrequently happened that gathercole arrived and departed withoutanybody being aware of the fact. we have been to his old lodgingsin lincoln's inn, but apparently he sold up there before he wentaway to the wilds of patagonia and relinquished his tenancy.
"the only clue i have is that a man answering to some extent tohis description left by the eleven o'clock train for paris lastnight.""you have seen the secretary of course," said the chief.
it was a question which t. x. had been dreading.
"gone too," he answered shortly; "in fact she has not been seensince 5:30 yesterday evening."sir george leant back in his chair and rumpled his thick greyhair.
"the only person who seems to have remained," he said with heavysarcasm, "was kara himself. would you like me to put somebodyelse on this case - it isn't exactly your job - or will you carryit on?""i prefer to carry it on, sir," said t. x. firmly.
"have you found out anything more about kara?"t. x. nodded.
"all that i have discovered about him is eminently discreditable,"he said. "he seems to have had an ambition to occupy a veryimportant position in albania. to this end he had bribed andsubsidized the turkish and albanian officials and had a fairlylarge following in that country. bartholomew tells me that karahad already sounded him as to the possibility of the britishgovernment recognising a fait accompli in albania and had beeninducing him to use his influence with the cabinet to recognizethe consequence of any revolution. there is no doubt whateverthat kara has engineered all the political assassinations whichhave been such a feature in the news from albania during this pastyear. we also found in the house very large sums of money anddocuments which we have handed over to the foreign office fordecoding."sir george thought for a long time.
then he said, "i have an idea that if you find your secretary youwill be half way to solving the mystery."t. x. went out from the office in anything but a joyous mood. hewas on his way to lunch when he remembered his promise to callupon john lexman.
could lexman supply a key which would unravel this tragic tangle?
he leant out of his taxi-cab and redirected the driver. ithappened that the cab drove up to the door of the great midlandhotel as john lexman was coming out.
"come and lunch with me," said t. x. "i suppose you've heard allthe news.""i read about kara being killed, if that's what you mean," saidthe other. "it was rather a coincidence that i should have beendiscussing the matter last night at the very moment when histelephone bell rang - i wish to heaven you hadn't been in this,"he said fretfully.
"why?" asked the astonished assistant commissioner, "and what doyou mean by 'in it'?""in the concrete sense i wish you had not been present when ireturned," said the other moodily, "i wanted to be finished withthe whole sordid business without in any way involving myfriends.""i think you are too sensitive," laughed the other, clapping himon the shoulder. "i want you to unburden yourself to me, my dearchap, and tell me anything you can that will help me to clear upthis mystery."john lexman looked straight ahead with a worried frown.
"i would do almost anything for you, t. x.," he said quietly, "themore so since i know how good you were to grace, but i can't helpyou in this matter. i hated kara living, i hate him dead," hecried, and there was a passion in his voice which wasunmistakable; "he was the vilest thing that ever drew the breathof life. there was no villainy too despicable, no cruelty sohorrid but that he gloried in it. if ever the devil wereincarnate on earth he took the shape and the form of remingtonkara. he died too merciful a death by all accounts. but if thereis a god, this man will suffer for his crimes in hell through alleternity."t. x. looked at him in astonishment. the hate in the man's facetook his breath away. never before had he experienced orwitnessed such a vehemence of loathing.
"what did kara do to you?" he demanded.
the other looked out of the window.
"i am sorry," he said in a milder tone; "that is my weakness.
some day i will tell you the whole story but for the moment itwere better that it were not told. i will tell you this," heturned round and faced the detective squarely, "kara tortured andkilled my wife."t. x. said no more.
half way through lunch he returned indirectly to the subject.
"do you know gathercole?" he asked.
t. x. nodded.
"i think you asked me that question once before, or perhaps it wassomebody else. yes, i know him, rather an eccentric man with anartificial arm.""that's the cove," said t. x. with a little sigh; "he's one of thefew men i want to meet just now.""why?""because he was apparently the last man to see kara alive."john lexman looked at the other with an impatient jerk of hisshoulders.
"you don't suspect gathercole, do you?" he asked.
"hardly," said the other drily; "in the first place the man thatcommitted this murder had two hands and needed them both. no, ionly want to ask that gentleman the subject of his conversation.
i also want to know who was in the room with kara when gathercolewent in.""h'm," said john lexman.
"even if i found who the third person was, i am still puzzled asto how they got out and fastened the heavy latch behind them. nowin the old days, lexman," he said good humouredly, "you would havemade a fine mystery story out of this. how would you have madeyour man escape?"lexman thought for a while.
"have you examined the safe!" he asked.
"yes," said the other.
"was there very much in it?"t. x. looked at him in astonishment.
"just the ordinary books and things. why do you ask?""suppose there were two doors to that safe, one on the outside ofthe room and one on the inside, would it be possible to passthrough the safe and go down the wall?""i have thought of that," said t. x.
"of course," said lexman, leaning back and toying with asalt-spoon, "in writing a story where one hasn't got to deal withthe absolute possibilities, one could always have made kara have asafe of that character in order to make his escape in the event ofdanger. he might keep a rope ladder stored inside, open the backdoor, throw out his ladder to a friend and by some trickarrangement could detach the ladder and allow the door to swing toagain.""a very ingenious idea," said t. x., "but unfortunately it doesn'twork in this case. i have seen the makers of the safe and thereis nothing very eccentric about it except the fact that it ismounted as it is. can you offer another suggestion?"john lexman thought again.
"i will not suggest trap doors, or secret panels or anything sobanal," he said, "nor mysterious springs in the wall which, whentouched, reveal secret staircases."he smiled slightly.
"in my early days, i must confess i, was rather keen upon thatsort of thing, but age has brought experience and i havediscovered the impossibility of bringing an architect to one's wayof thinking even in so commonplace a matter as the position of ascullery. it would be much more difficult to induce him toconstruct a house with double walls and secret chambers."t. x. waited patiently.
"there is a possibility, of course," said lexman slowly, "that thesteel latch may have been raised by somebody outside by someingenious magnetic arrangement and lowered in a similar manner.""i have thought about it," said t. x. triumphantly, "and i havemade the most elaborate tests only this morning. it is quiteimpossible to raise the steel latch because once it is dropped itcannot be raised again except by means of the knob, the pulling ofwhich releases the catch which holds the bar securely in itsplace. try another one, john."john lexman threw back his head in a noiseless laugh.
"why i should be helping you to discover the murderer of kara isbeyond my understanding," he said, "but i will give you anothertheory, at the same time warning you that i may be putting you offthe track. for god knows i have more reason to murder kara thanany man in the world."he thought a while.
"the chimney was of course impossible?""there was a big fire burning in the grate," explained t. x.; "sobig indeed that the room was stifling."john lexman nodded.
"that was kara's way," he said; "as a matter of fact i know thesuggestion about magnetism in the steel bar was impossible,because i was friendly with kara when he had that bar put in andpretty well know the mechanism, although i had forgotten it forthe moment. what is your own theory, by the way?"t. x. pursed his lips.
"my theory isn't very clearly formed," he said cautiously, "but sofar as it goes, it is that kara was lying on the bed probablyreading one of the books which were found by the bedside when hisassailant suddenly came upon him. kara seized the telephone tocall for assistance and was promptly killed."again there was silence.
"that is a theory," said john lexman. with his curiousdeliberation of speech, "but as i say i refuse to be definite -have you found the weapon?"t. x. shook his head.
"were there any peculiar features about the room which astonishedyou, and which you have not told me?"t. x. hesitated.
"there were two candles," he said, "one in the middle of the roomand one under the bed. that in the middle of the room was a smallchristmas candle, the one under the bed was the ordinary candle ofcommerce evidently roughly cut and probably cut in the room. wefound traces of candle chips on the floor and it is evident to methat the portion which was cut off was thrown into the fire, forhere again we have a trace of grease."lexman nodded.
"anything further?" he asked.
"the smaller candle was twisted into a sort of corkscrew shape.""the clue of the twisted candle," mused john lexman "that's a verygood title - kara hated candles.""why?"lexman leant back in his chair, selected a cigarette from a silvercase.
"in my wanderings," he said, "i have been to many strange places.
i have been to the country which you probably do not know, andwhich the traveller who writes books about countries seldomvisits. there are queer little villages perched on the spurs ofthe bleakest hills you ever saw. i have lived with communitieswhich acknowledge no king and no government. these have theirlaws handed down to them from father to son - it is a nationwithout a written language. they administer their laws rigidlyand drastically. the punishments they award are cruel - inhuman.
i have seen, the woman taken in adultery stoned to death as in thebest biblical traditions, and i have seen the thief blinded."t. x. shivered.
"i have seen the false witness stand up in a barbaric market placewhilst his tongue was torn from him. sometimes the turks or thepiebald governments of the state sent down a few gendarmes andtried a sort of sporadic administration of the country. itusually ended in the representative of the law lapsing intobarbarism, or else disappearing from the face of the earth, with awhole community of murderers eager to testify, with singularunanimity, to the fact that he had either committed suicide or hadgone off with the wife of one of the townsmen.
"in some of these communities the candle plays a big part. it isnot the candle of commerce as you know it, but a dip made frommutton fat. strap three between the fingers of your hands andkeep the hand rigid with two flat pieces of wood; then let thecandles burn down lower and lower - can you imagine? or set acandle in a gunpowder trail and lead the trail to a well-oiledheap of shavings thoughtfully heaped about your naked feet. or acandle fixed to the shaved head of a man - there are hundreds ofvariations and the candle plays a part in all of them. i don'tknow which kara had cause to hate the worst, but i know one or twothat he has employed.""was he as bad as that?" asked t. x.
john lexman laughed.
"you don't know how bad he was," he said.
towards the end of the luncheon the waiter brought a note in to t.
x. which had been sent on from his office.
"dear mr. meredith,"in. answer to your enquiry i believe my daughter is in london,but i did not know it until this morning. my banker informs methat my daughter called at the bank this morning and drew aconsiderable sum of money from her private account, but where shehas gone and what she is doing with the money i do not know. ineed hardly tell you that i am very worried about this matter andi should be glad if you could explain what it is all about."it was signed "william bartholomew."t. x. groaned.
"if i had only had the sense to go to the bank this morning, ishould have seen her," he said. "i'm going to lose my job overthis."the other looked troubled.
"you don't seriously mean that""not exactly," smiled t. x., "but i don't think the chief is verypleased with me just now. you see i have butted into thisbusiness without any authority - it isn't exactly in mydepartment. but you have not given me your theory about thecandles.""i have no theory to offer," said the other, folding up hisserviette; "the candles suggest a typical albanian murder. i donot say that it was so, i merely say that by their presence theysuggest a crime of this character."with this t. x. had to be content.
if it were not his business to interest himself in commonplacemurder - though this hardly fitted such a description - it waspart of the peculiar function which his department exercised torestore to lady bartholomew a certain very elaborate snuff-boxwhich he discovered in the safe.
letters had been found amongst his papers which made clear thepart which kara had played. though he had not been a vulgarblackmailer he had retained his hold, not only upon thisparticular property of lady bartholomew, but upon certain otherarticles which were discovered, with no other object, apparently,than to compel influence from quarters likely to be of assistanceto him in his schemes.
the inquest on the murdered man which the assistant commissionerattended produced nothing in the shape of evidence and thecoroner's verdict of "murder against some person or personsunknown" was only to be expected.
t. x. spent a very busy and a very tiring week tracing elusiveclues which led him nowhere. he had a letter from john lexmanannouncing the fact that he intended leaving for the unitedstates. he had received a very good offer from a firm of magazinepublishers in new york and was going out to take up theappointment.
meredith's plans were now in fair shape. he had decided upon theline of action he would take and in the pursuance of this heinterviewed his chief and the minister of justice.
"yes, i have heard from my daughter," said that great manuncomfortably, "and really she has placed me in a mostembarrassing position. i cannot tell you, mr. meredith, exactlyin what manner she has done this, but i can assure you she has.""can i see her letter or telegram?" asked t. x.
"i am afraid that is impossible," said the other solemnly; "shebegged me to keep her communication very secret. i have writtento my wife and asked her to come home. i feel the constant strainto which i am being subjected is more than human man can endure.""i suppose," said t. x. patiently, "it is impossible for you totell me to what address you have replied?""to no address," answered the other and corrected himselfhurriedly; "that is to say i only received the telegram - themessage this morning and there is no address - to reply to.""i see," said t. x.
that afternoon he instructed his secretary.
"i want a copy of all the agony advertisements in to-morrow'spapers and in the last editions of the evening papers - have themready for me tomorrow morning when i come."they were waiting for him when he reached the office at nineo'clock the next day and he went through them carefully.
presently he found the message he was seeking.
b. m. you place me awkward position. very thoughtless. havereceived package addressed your mother which have placed inmother's sitting-room. cannot understand why you want me to goaway week-end and give servants holiday but have done so. shallrequire very full explanation. matter gone far enough. father.
"this," said t. x. exultantly, as he read the advertisement, "iswhere i get busy."
