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Title: Fatal fingers

A mystery

Author: William Le Queux

Illustrator: A. C. Gilbert

Release date: November 24, 2025 [eBook #77320]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Cassell and Company, Ltd, 1914

Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FATAL FINGERS ***

FATAL FINGERS

A MYSTERY

BY

WILLIAM LE QUEUX

CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD

London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne

1914

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

CONTENTS

1. IS MAINLY ABOUT RICHARD GOODRICK

2. THE NIGHT OF THE SEVENTEENTH

3. THE AFFAIR AT CHARLWOOD STREET

4. YET ANOTHER PROBLEM

5. IS ABOUT UNCLE JOHN

6. SUSPICION!

7. WITHHELD FROM THE PUBLIC

8. THE MAN OF THE MOMENT

9. SOME CONFIDENCES

10. RICHARD GOODRICK’S SECRET

11. CONCERNS LOVE AND A MYSTERY

12. TO FACE THE MUSIC

13. FACE TO FACE

14. INTRODUCES A VISITOR

15. FROM THE BEYOND

16. A SCENE IN THE HOUSE

17. TO PAY THE PRICE

18. THE MARBLE FACE

19. MORE ABOUT JOHN AMBROSE

20. REVEALS TREACHERY

21. DON MARIO AT HOME

22. CONTAINS AN ADMISSION

23. THE LOVERS

24. IN FADED INK

25. CONCERNS THE UNEXPECTED

26. THE FESTA OF CORPUS DOMINI

27. FROM OUT THE PAST

28. TELLS GORDON’S SECRET

29. THE ACCUSATION

30. WHAT OCCURRED ON THE SEVENTEENTH

FATAL FINGERS

CHAPTER I.

IS MAINLY ABOUT RICHARD GOODRICK

“NO; keep your money, my dear sir.”

“Then you refuse?”

“I do—absolutely.”

“Remember, I am making you a very substantial offer. Fifty thousand pounds is not to be gained every day.”

“Not if you offered me one hundred times the amount. I have never been open to bribery.”

“No, no; you can hardly call it bribery, Mr. Goodrick. I think——”

“I don’t know what you call it but bribery,” growled the thin, white-bearded old man seated in the easy chair by the fireplace. “I’ve really got nothing more to say to you. I wish you’d go—go away and leave me in peace.”

The other, a rather stout, red-faced, well-dressed man of about fifty, with a distinctly business-like air, made a quick gesture of impatience as he stood upon the shabby hearthrug opposite the old man.

“You’ve surely been left in peace long enough. For eighteen years you’ve lived in this stuffy little hole, hidden away from everybody. Everyone believes you to be dead—that you died, and carried your secret to the grave.”

“And if I did, what, in the name of Fate, does it matter to you—eh?” croaked old Mr. Goodrick.

“Well—are you acting honestly and fairly towards Gordon—or Maidee, and the rest?” queried his visitor.

“Fairly!” echoed the other, laughing. “That’s really capital—you, George Ravenscourt, talking of fairness and honesty! You offer me fifty thousand if I will—well, act in such a manner as will give a distinct advantage to your friends—eh? Ah! my dear sir, your reputation for honesty is well known—to me, at least, if not to some others.”

“It seems you are in a somewhat insulting mood to-day,” exclaimed the other hastily. “Some dealer has got the better of you, perhaps—sold you a bit of faked silver or spurious china.”

“Dealers, I think, know me a little too well to attempt fraud upon me,” snapped the old man in a thin, hoarse voice.

“But will nothing soften your heart towards those who have suffered by this long self-effacement of yours?” asked his visitor, appealing to him in a changed tone.

“No,” replied the yellow-faced, keen-eyed old fellow. “I dropped out of life purposely. I’ve lived here all these years in the back streets of Pimlico, because I had a motive.”

“What was your motive?”

“That’s my own affair,” was the sharp response; and the old man spread out his thin hands to warm them by the fickle flame of the meagre fire. “By a silly error, because I thought myself safe from recognition, I betrayed my continued existence. But even you, Ravenscourt, shall not tempt me to return to life—to face the past.”

“My dear Mr. Goodrick, after eighteen years the whole affair is forgotten. The public have very short memories. Try to recall the cause célèbre of the year before last, and you’ll have difficulty in recollecting the names of the parties concerned. You’re just a little too sensitive. Think, if you returned—what a difference in your position!”

“Yes,” croaked the old man; “here in Pimlico I’m known as Nosey Goodrick, of Charlwood Street. The boys in the street call after me, and the neighbours regard me, I think, as a harmless crank. What would they say if they knew—if they knew the truth?”

“What would the world say if they knew that you, whose great talents are perpetuated by that marble statue in Westminster, and whom thousands followed to the grave; you, for whom the whole country mourned, are here, still alive and active!”

“Hush!” cried the old fellow, glancing apprehensively at the closed door. “Mrs. Ayres may overhear! Please do not recall the past, Ravenscourt. It is all too painful. I’ve long ago forgotten it. Nowadays I am plain Richard Goodrick, and soon I shall die and be buried in some suburban cemetery in the name under which I have chosen so long to live.”

“No,” declared his visitor; “you don’t mean that. You’ll return. It is your duty to the nation. An excuse can easily be made.”

“Return—never, I tell you!” cried the old man fiercely, starting to his feet, exhibiting the fact that he was unusually tall and straight for his age. His white face was bony and narrow, with an exceptionally prominent nose, a shock of white hair, and long white whiskers. He was dressed in a loosely made suit of shabby grey whip-cord tweed, with a narrow stand-up collar and a seedy black cravat.

The room was a small back one on the ground floor, but so filled with curios of all descriptions that it had an appearance more like the shop of a dealer in antiques than a living-room. Dusty pictures, priceless china, ivories, miniatures, a piece or two of genuine Chippendale, bundles of rare prints, some savage weapons, an ancient bronze torso from Greece, a quantity of rusty mediæval damascened armour, a big case of stuffed birds, and other curios were heaped about the place, until there seemed only barely room to move in the centre.

Opposite the fire was a square table covered with a piece of old green serge in lieu of a cloth; the carpet was so threadbare that all pattern had, years ago, disappeared, while on the frayed horsehair sofa beneath the window lay piles of old newspapers.

The day was the seventeenth of January, 1908. The faint grey light of the short wintry afternoon struggling in increased the depressing cheerlessness of the place, for the outlook was upon a high blank wall.

The visitor gazed around, and shuddered at the miserable abode. For eighteen years that man before him, the bearer of one of the most honoured and renowned names in Great Britain—the man whose reputation was known in many corners of the globe—had lived there, silent, alone, and unsuspected; absorbed in various studies, reading his own obituary notices, and sneering at the fulsome praise which those who were his enemies in life bestowed upon him when they believed him dead and out of the way.

He had had the unusual experience of being able to judge impartially his own popularity. Aloof from the world he had known and wherein he had been a power, he had looked on and laughed in triumph at his own obsequies. As Richard Goodrick, a retired schoolmaster, he had lived there in the house of the worthy Mrs. Ayres and her husband, paying his weekly rent punctually, and pursuing a life clock-like in its regularity.

As an art collector he had once been world-famed, and was, of course, known personally to all the great dealers in London and Paris. So, after his “death,” he dare no longer visit them, being compelled to pursue his hobby of curio-collecting among the smaller shops and obscure dealers. For eighteen years he had lived alone in Charlwood Street, and it was said by the women who gossiped over their garden walls that for eighteen years he had never been known to smile.

As he stood before his visitor he betrayed the fact that he was a man of iron will, quick to decide, and very resolute. In his dark, piercing eyes, which age had not dimmed, shone a fire of anger at the suggestion his visitor had made.

“I tell you,” he repeated firmly, “that I shall never reveal my existence. I died—they have buried me, fools that they are, and put up a statue to perpetuate my memory. American tourists go and gaze upon it, and say: ‘Wal, he was a grand man, anyhow.’ And I’ve fooled them—fooled the world—for I’m still alive.”

“That’s just it! You have withheld your aid, which, if given, would—if you will pardon my remark—bring happiness to many.”

“Why should I bring happiness to many?” snapped the quick-tempered old fellow. “I am the odd man out of the game. I am dead, remember—dead, unless you betray me, Ravenscourt,” he added, looking his visitor straight and unflinchingly in the face.

“I shall not betray you. Surely you know me better than that!” said the other reproachfully.

“If you offer me fifty thousand, then it would be worth an equal sum to you to betray me,” said the old man, speaking very slowly and distinctly. “You are not so well off as you once were. The money would be useful to you.”

“It would,” admitted his visitor. “But not for double the sum would I betray my old chief—the man to whom I owe everything.”

“I believe you, Ravenscourt,” the old recluse said, after a pause. “I used to trust you long ago—and I’ll trust you now.”

“And you will take my advice, and accept the sum offered?”

“No, no!” he cried quickly. “Never that. You can never bribe me. As I have lived, so will I die—in silence.”

“Leave this wretched place,” urged his visitor. “It is unfitted to you—you who have lived the life of the great. It is a marvel how you have existed here all these years.”

“It satisfies all my requirements,” was the man’s calm reply. “I am friendless, it is true, but I have my books and my collection,” and he waved his thin hand across the narrow, stuffy little room. “What more can I desire in this the evening of my life? Do you know,” he added, “I would not exchange this quiet, uneventful existence in a back street in London for all the society gatherings, the yachting, the racing, the Riviera, and the grouse moors in Christendom. When I ‘died’ I gladly finished with it all.”

“Who knew the real secret of your death?” asked his visitor, interested.

“Finnimore.”

“Finnimore, your old valet? And he died ten years ago!”

“Yes. And only you, Ravenscourt, are now aware of the fact that I did not die. And you I trust to maintain the strictest silence.”

“You place me in a very difficult position,” the other said in dissatisfaction. “That night, a week ago, when, as I passed you in Whitehall, something in your face struck me as familiar—what it was I can’t tell—you knew that I had recognised you, and you cleverly evaded me. It was not until I employed Jewell, the private inquiry agent, that I was able to track you here to your hiding-place, and meet you face to face in daylight. Then I convinced myself of the astounding truth that you, for whom the whole country had mourned, were not dead, but actually lived!”

“Well, and have not other men, tired of life or crushed by some great sorrow or misfortune, done exactly the same thing as myself? I am not alone.”

“But—permit me to say so—you are not now acting with that high feeling of honesty and humanity with which you always acted throughout your brilliant career.”

“Because I do not return to my proper station!” exclaimed the old man angrily. “I am the proper judge of that. Ravenscourt! I am inexorable; I shall never leave here. Keep your fifty thousand pounds—and I will keep my secret.”

“And bring ruin upon us?”

“I regret, but I cannot depart from the course I laid down eighteen years ago.”

“You were not usually so cruel.”

“Not before the great blow fell upon me, George. It wrecked your life, ended my career, and hardened my heart,” he said slowly in a changed voice. “But don’t let us discuss it further. I’m glad to have seen you, though I’ve passed you often and often when you have failed to recognise me. But now please leave me—and forget that you have spoken with one who is ‘dead.’ ”

A deep shadow of pain crossed the face of his visitor. The men, standing together, seemed to fill the narrow, musty-smelling little apartment. From the smoke-blackened wall opposite an ugly Japanese mask grinned down upon them.

There was a movement outside the door, and Ravenscourt noticed how the old man started nervously and grew pale as his eyes turned apprehensively towards the door.

“I cannot forget that I have spoken with you,” said his visitor. “The hour I have spent here is the strangest one of my whole life—speaking with one whom the world has lost. True, I owe much to you, and it is in repayment of that I am here, offering you the sum of fifty thousand pounds if you will only consent to return and resume your place in society and in the world of London.”

Goodrick smiled bitterly and stroked his white beard.

“What do I want with fifty thousand pounds?” he asked. “Before I left the world I made long and careful preparation. I carried with me twenty thousand pounds, much of it in gold, because notes might have given me away. With some of that I have speculated in curios. The contents of this room”—and he waved his thin hand—“would fetch forty thousand if put up to auction. See!”—and he took out a small, ancient, leather-bound, illuminated manuscript in parchment—“this thirteenth-century volume from the Borghese collection would alone fetch fifteen hundred to two thousand at Sotheby’s any day. No; I do not want money. When I do—I have it here.”

“Aren’t you afraid of being robbed of your treasures?” queried his visitor, gazing around at the miscellaneous collection of antiques.

“Robbed? No. Who would dream that here, in this back room in Pimlico, are stored some of the best curios that have been in the market during the past fifteen years? Look at this Caxton,” and he opened a small, thin, black-letter book, “it is unique. No other copy of this work exists. The British Museum would gladly purchase it for almost any sum to-morrow—if they only knew of it!”

“And you actually refuse to act as I suggest?”

“I do!” cried the old man, the fire of resentment again in his eyes. “Go, Ravenscourt, guard my secret—and forget that you have seen or spoken with me. I am dead, remember—dead to all, even to you. And,” he added, looking at him meaningly, “you dare not betray me—remember!”

“But I——”

“There are no buts. Leave me. Farewell,” he said in a firm, authoritative tone as he stood erect, holding forth his long, bony hand.

For a moment his visitor hesitated. Then, seeing determination in the old man’s eyes, he took the proffered hand and bent over it with courtly gesture, accepting his dismissal with a sigh.

“If you reconsider your decision, remember that I am at any moment at your service,” he said.

“I shall never do that, Ravenscourt. Adieu—for always.”

And then the other, his voice choked by emotion, opened the door and passed down the narrow little hall and out into the street.

The old man listened till the front door slammed, then casting himself back into his arm-chair, held out his hands to the cheerless fire, and, nodding his head slowly in self-satisfaction, croaked aloud in a weak, thin voice:

“That man is my enemy. He knows the identity of Richard Goodrick! But he does not know his secret! Oh, no! no! He will never know that—never—never! He will die before that.”

CHAPTER II.

THE NIGHT OF THE SEVENTEENTH

AS Ravenscourt stood at the corner of Denbigh Street he hailed a passing taxi and drove to the Carlton Club, where he sat in a corner of the smoking-room, pretending to read, but pondering deeply.

If the truth were known regarding that man in concealment in Pimlico, what a sensation it would cause! The whole world would be amazed.

There, hanging at the farther end of the great room, was a fine portrait of the man now known as Richard Goodrick, painted by a celebrated R.A. a year before his death.

He turned and gazed upon it. Yes, there could be no mistaking the general outline of the features, though eighteen years of the life of a studious recluse had effected some marked changes. The portrait was that of one in the prime of manhood. To-day Goodrick was thin, wasted, white-haired and careworn.

“I wonder whether he will ever relent,” thought the grave-faced man seated by the club fire, heedless of his friends who came and went. “Why did he so cleverly disappear? Ah! that is a mystery. He admitted that he was a long time preparing for it. And yet his doctors, just before his ‘death,’ had declared him to be suffering from an incurable disease which must inevitably prove fatal. Did they lie? Were they also in the conspiracy?”

He recollected their names, and, rising, crossed the room and took down the “Medical Directory.” Then, after a search, he found that both were, alas! dead.

“Perhaps he paid them to make that alarming diagnosis!” he reflected, re-seating himself in his arm-chair. “He was a shrewd and clever man—one of the keenest, most far-seeing of our time. Yet he died at the very height of his popularity—at a moment when England could ill afford to spare him. He deceived us all—even his Sovereign, who sent a representative to place a wreath upon his coffin. And to-day I have seen and spoken with him—the man to whom I owe my fame, my fortune, my baronetcy—everything. I wonder—I wonder if I was mistaken a fortnight ago when I thought I passed that Italian priest, Don Mario, in the bustle of Oxford Street? The man, though he did not wear his clerical clothes, strangely resembled him. I wonder whether Goodrick and he are still friends—whether—but no! it would be impossible after what occurred. And yet,” he whispered aloud, “supposing Don Mario is still in London—supposing he thought fit to retaliate!”

He held his breath for a moment, pursed his lips, and the colour left his face.

“Don Mario! Padre Mario Mellini!” he repeated to himself.

Then, with a long sigh, he sat with his hands thrust deep into his trousers pockets, his eyes fixed immovably upon the fire, recalling strange incidents of the past.

A spare, wiry, clean-shaven man in black coat and grey trousers entered the room, and, noticing him, nodded, exclaiming: “How-do, Ravenscourt!”

It was Lord Llanarth, who had taken the place of the dead man, and who had risen to a pinnacle of fame almost as high as that occupied by his talented predecessor.

Ravenscourt started at sight of him. What would Llanarth think if he dared to rise and say that not two hours ago he had sat with the man whose tomb was in Westminster Abbey? But the seal of secrecy was upon his lips.

Llanarth crossed to him, and standing with his hands behind his back, asked him a question—his opinion upon a point which had arisen in Parliament on the previous night—to which he replied mechanically, without knowing what he said.

Then, finding Llanarth to be in a talkative mood, and eager to escape, he rose and declared that he must be going.

“See you at the Foreign Office reception to-night?” asked his lordship.

“Suppose so,” laughed the other, who, passing out, got his hat and coat and walked down Pall Mall to his house in Carlton House Terrace.

In the silence of his own fine library, the windows of which looked out upon the Mall, now bright with its long double row of lamps, he sat before the fire pondering—recalling every word which had fallen from the lips of Richard Goodrick.

The latter, too, was seated before his meagre fire in Pimlico, warming his hands and croaking in triumph.

Mrs. Ayres, a kindly, grey-haired person whose husband was employed in a wholesale drapery warehouse in St. Paul’s Churchyard, entered, bearing a tray with her lodger’s tea and toast. She found him staring straight before him, absorbed in his own thoughts. That day he had scarcely uttered a word to her.

He was a man of moods. His manner was sometimes strange. She thought she had of late detected a queer, unusual expression in his face, and had told her neighbours so. Nosey Goodrick was eccentric, and as such his odd fits of moroseness usually passed unnoticed.

If he did not speak, then she never addressed him, for well she knew the snappy, ill-natured reply she would obtain.

So she put down the tray upon the littered table, lit the gas, drew the blinds, and left him to his ruminations.

“The old fool!” growled her lodger as soon as his landlady had gone, and he turned and ate his tea with a relish.

Afterwards, he carefully slipped the small bolt which he had placed on the door for use when he wished to study undisturbed, and diving beneath the table—a genuine example of Chippendale worth a hundred pounds if a penny—he produced part of an old Sheffield-plate candelabrum, the base of which he carefully unscrewed, disclosing the cylindrical stem to be hollow. And from it he shook out a small roll of closely written manuscript.

He re-seated himself and slowly, with evident self-satisfaction, read the document, now and then scribbling some marginal notes with a stubby pencil.

“Perfectly in order!” he laughed to himself. “Ravenscourt would bribe me with fifty thousand pounds. No doubt he would. Here is written one of the reasons why I ‘died.’ The world will never know the other.”

Then he was again silent for a long time.

“Ravenscourt spoke of little Maidee, and of Gordon and the rest,” he sighed aloud at last, passing his thin hand across his brow. “Ah! he doesn’t know—he little dreams the amazing truth—neither does Don Mario. The world would stand astounded if my identity became revealed; but it would be staggered if the real and actual truth—my secret—were disclosed. And”—he paused, a bitter smile crossing his worn, sharply cut features—“and yet am I not, perhaps, deceiving myself, as I have deceived them? After all, I may be acting a little injudiciously.”

At that moment the old brass-faced grandfather clock, an antique affair with only one hand, struck six upon its mellow bell.

“Ah!” he ejaculated, starting up. “It’s time I went. I quite forgot the danger! I must go at once.” And rising, he carefully put back the document into the stem of the old candelabrum, struggled into a rusty old brown overcoat, and taking up his frayed hat and heavy cherry-wood stick, unbolted the door and went forth into the wet and darkness.

At the corner he halted for a moment as though uncertain in which direction to proceed, but with sudden resolve he continued up Denbigh Street and along Wilton Road to Victoria Station. Entering the Brighton line terminus, he met a tall, thin, grey-haired Roman Catholic priest—a man with a long face, a hook nose, a dark complexion, and deep-set eyes, who, dressed in a shabby, black coat of unmistakably foreign cut, a narrow white collar sadly soiled, and a shabby clerical hat, had been anxiously awaiting him for the past half-hour.

The pair exchanged some rapid words in Italian, old Goodrick glancing with quick, suspicious eyes furtively around as though in fear that they might be observed.

The priest seemed nervous, too, for next moment they hurried across the platform together and became absorbed in the rushing, home-going crowd of business men.

Seven hours later, at half-past one in the morning, Burgess, the fat and rather pompous butler of Sir George Ravenscourt, Baronet, K.C.V.O., heard the front door close, and knowing that his master—who had been out to the Foreign Office reception—had returned, ascended the stairs to the ground floor, and approaching the door of the library, tapped lightly.

There was no response.

He tapped again discreetly, but louder. Then he turned the handle and entered.

The green-shaded lamp was burning upon the writing-table, but the room was empty.

The man was about to ascend to his master’s room to inquire if he wanted anything before retiring, when suddenly his eye caught something unusual—a small blue-and-white Chinese vase lay upon the floor broken.

He advanced into the room when he heard a slight noise, and peering across, saw to his dismay his master lying upon the carpet, half concealed by a big saddle-bag chair. In a flash the faithful servant was kneeling by his side, supporting his head.

“Burgess!” gasped the Baronet faintly, “I—I’m dying—a—a doctor! That paper—burn it. Don’t let anyone see it—promise!”

“What paper, Sir George?” asked the bewildered man breathlessly.

“On my table. I—I was writing it when—when he—— Burn it. Promise?”

“I promise, Sir George. But what’s the matter, sir? Tell me, sir. Quick!” cried the butler, who knew instinctively that his master’s life was fast ebbing.

“I—I came in half an hour ago, and—and I was writing when—when——”

He gasped and drew a long breath. His white lips moved, but no further sound came from them.

“Speak, Sir George!” cried the man. “Tell me who attacked you.”

But all the response was another long-drawn sigh, as the muscles of his face slowly relaxed, and the heart was still—still for ever.

Sir George Ravenscourt was dead—struck down by an unknown hand.

Burgess, a servant of many years’ standing, raised himself and stood horrified. Upon the hand which had supported his master’s head was a tiny smear of blood, so small as to be almost imperceptible. Then his first thought was of his promise to his master, and he crossed to the writing-table whereon lay several sheets of ruled paper, upon one of which he saw some writing in the Baronet’s hand. It ended abruptly, the pen lay upon the floor, showing that he had been in the act of writing when struck, and rising from his chair had staggered towards the bell, but had fallen ere he could reach it.

Quickly the butler, bending to the table, took up the paper, and, with a rapid glance at it, folded it and crushed it into his pocket in order to destroy it afterwards.

Then he went out into the hall, and, raising the alarm, awakened the household, after which he ran back to the telephone and sent a message to the police.

Lady Ravenscourt, who had retired, rushed down in her dressing-gown and prostrated herself beside her dead husband, to whom she had been so devoted, while Miss Irene Lambton knelt beside her, overcome with grief.

The scene in that fine room was, indeed, a tragic one, for the servants, all white and scared, crowded in to gaze upon their master in crumpled evening dress, and wearing the ribbons of the Bath, the Victorian and other Orders, lying white-faced and dead. There were sounds of weeping, and hushed expressions of horror everywhere.

A loud ring at the door, and the police entered—an inspector with a man in plain clothes and two constables in dripping waterproof capes and water streaming from their helmets.

All was bustle and interrogation.

Quickly, but tenderly, the weeping widow was led away with the dark-haired girl, sweet faced and dainty in her pink silk kimono, and the inspector at once made a cursory examination, followed almost instantly by the police divisional surgeon, who bent beside the prostrate man and at once made the formal pronouncement that life was extinct.

Burgess was closely questioned as to hearing the front door close; the room was carefully examined, but no weapon of any kind could be discovered. Then, in response to a telephone message sent by the inspector to New Scotland Yard, three expert officers promptly arrived in a taxi-cab.

The room was thoroughly re-examined for finger-prints, and a number were found upon various articles of furniture by dusting them over lightly with the pale green chalk used by officers of the finger-print department.

As far as the police could discover, the crime was entirely devoid of motive. Whoever had entered there, however, had evidently come with murderous intent.

“The murderer probably accompanied Sir George home,” declared Detective-Inspector Medland, the well-known officer of the Criminal Investigation Department. “A quarrel may have arisen.”

“No,” said the doctor, who himself took great interest in the investigation of crime; “the victim was seated at his writing-table when the assassin crept up stealthily and touched him in the nape of the neck with a long, thin needle. It was poisoned. See the tiny punctured wound it made, half hidden by the hair. Sir George rose to face his assassin, and staggered across the room. Here, you see his actions plainly visible. He tried to get at the bell in order to rouse the household, but stumbled before he could reach it.”

Burgess stood by in silence, a grave, dark-faced, stout man of forty-five, portly in his sombre black. He said nothing because he felt that his master held some secret which the police ought not to learn. He wished first to read the paper he had secured before making any statement.

Throughout the greater part of the night the keenest activity was displayed by the police in that fine house in Carlton House Terrace. Men came and went mysteriously, and the whole room in which the murder had taken place was thoroughly investigated.

As far as could be ascertained, the assassin had left no clue to his identity. The three expert detectives, after examining the latch upon the front door, agreed that the murderer must have entered there in company with his victim. Yet Burgess, the only servant remaining up, had heard no sound until the front door had slammed.

Lady Ravenscourt and Miss Maidee—as Irene was always called—had accompanied Sir George to the Foreign Office, where a brilliant reception had been held in honour of the visit of a foreign prince, and leaving at eleven, had taken him in his motor to the Travellers’, where they had dropped him, proceeding home and retiring to their rooms.

The whole affair was a complete mystery. Somehow the papers had already got wind of it, for by three o’clock reporters arrived hot-foot, thirsting for information, which the shrewd Burgess, at the instigation of the detectives, strenuously withheld.

They knew that a tragedy had happened, but of its exact details they were being kept in ignorance.

Burgess, as soon as he could slip away for a moment, entered his pantry, and locking the door, took from his pocket the crumpled manuscript which his master had been in the act of writing when struck down.

Spreading it out with trembling fingers, he read it from end to end.

“That’s strange!” he gasped astounded. “Why did Sir George so earnestly desire this to be burned? Perhaps, after all, I ought to have told the police everything. I have not said that my poor master was still conscious when I found him. He evidently wished to preserve this secret which he has put upon record. But, in the interests of justice, ought I not to place this in the hands of the police?”

He stood motionless, gazing upon the floor of the narrow pantry, the strange document in his hand. Faithful servant that he was, he was now divided in his duty towards his master and his duty to assist the ends of justice. He was entirely at a loss to know how to act.

To give the paper to the detectives would be to disclose a fact which, at all hazards, his dead master wished suppressed. Yet, if he burned it, he might be destroying a very valuable clue to the assassin!

Burgess, though discretion personified, suddenly resolved to disobey the promise he had given to the dying man, and consult her ladyship; and, ascending the stairs, he tapped softly at the door of her room.

Miss Maidee gave permission to enter, and the old servant found the pair plunged in the deepest grief.

“Excuse me, your ladyship, but—well, may I speak to you for one moment alone? I would not disturb you at this hour of grief were it not absolutely imperative.”

“Lady Ravenscourt can see no one, Burgess,” replied the tearful girl quickly. “You ought surely to know that!”

“But I deeply regret, miss, I must speak with her—alone.”

The widow raised her tear-stained face and motioned the girl to go out of the room. Then, when the door had closed, the butler advanced to the grief-stricken woman, and in a few brief sentences explained how he had discovered Sir George, and what the dying man had said, afterwards handing her the paper which her husband had penned.

Swiftly she read it through, then, staring straight before her, her white hands trembling, her eyes filled with tears, she cried:

“What can all this mean, Burgess? Why did my husband so eagerly desire to conceal the facts? This must be given to the police, by all means. They should not remain in ignorance of this another moment.”

“If that is your ladyship’s decision, I will carry it out,” replied the grave-faced man. “And—and may I, as poor Sir George’s servant, be permitted to express my deepest sympathy with you in your sad bereavement, m’lady,” he added in a low, hoarse voice as he turned, and, bowing respectfully, retired, closing the door softly after him.

Big Ben slowly boomed forth the hour of five as he descended the stairs and called Detective-Inspector Medland into the long dining-room.

To him he made a full statement descriptive of his discovery and the dying words of his unfortunate master, afterwards producing the crumpled manuscript which Sir George had been so anxious should be destroyed.

The quick-eyed, dark-haired detective looked suspiciously for a second into the butler’s round face, then, taking the sheet of paper, read the lines of crabbed writing from end to end.

“That’s most extraordinary!” he declared when he had finished. “Why didn’t you produce this before—eh?”

“Because of the promise I had made to my dying master. I was compelled to consult my mistress first.”

Grunting in evident dissatisfaction, the inspector returned to the library and held secret counsel with the two officers accompanying him. Very shortly, both the latter came out hurriedly and put on their hats and coats.

“You’ll not have much difficulty in finding Charlwood Street,” Medland said briskly. “It’s a short turning running between Denbigh Street and Lupus Street—number seventy-eight. Be as quick as you can, and ’phone me anything fresh you discover. What’s your number here, butler?”

Burgess told them, and one of the men noted it upon his shirt-cuff.

Then the pair went eagerly along the hall, and out towards Pall Mall, running the gauntlet of a knot of eager but disappointed reporters outside.

The chief of the Criminal Investigation Department arrived in a motor-car some twenty minutes later, and Medland, standing in the library, was engaged in explaining the principal points of the mysterious affair to his chief when, of a sudden, the telephone bell rang sharply, and the inspector crossed to the instrument.

“Yes,” he answered into the transmitter; “Medland speaking. Is that you, Wagner? Well?”

And then the inspector listened.

“What? Is that so? You’ve found the individual Richard Goodrick murdered—killed in exactly the same manner as Sir George! This is most extraordinary!” Then, turning quickly to his chief, he said: “Perhaps, sir, you’d like to listen to this amazing report of Sergeant Wagner!”

And he handed him the receiver, telling his assistant to repeat the facts to his chief.

“Well, Medland,” exclaimed the gentlemanly-looking official, gazing at the inspector with a bewildered expression, when he had heard all the detective had to say and had himself asked one or two questions; “this certainly is a most remarkable and complicated piece of business! Why, I wonder, did Sir George want to burn that record he had written? We had, I think, better both go over to Charlwood Street at once.”

The faithful Burgess, who was present and overheard the conversation, turned away.

His quick, dark eyes narrowed, his shaven mouth hardened for a second; and he bit his lip.

CHAPTER III.

THE AFFAIR AT CHARLWOOD STREET

AS the chief drove Inspector Medland along in the landaulette which had been waiting, the detective again took from his pocket the document which Sir George had been so anxious to destroy before his death. He read, by the little light in the car, as follows:

“I, George Ravenscourt, Baronet, desire, on this seventeenth day of January, 1908, to place upon record a most strange and amazing circumstance which has occurred here in the city of Westminster. Eighteen years ago the nation, and indeed all political parties, suffered an irreparable loss by the death of one who was a great Imperialist. Without one showy accomplishment, without wit to amuse or eloquence to persuade, with a voice unmelodious and a manner ungraceful, and barely able to speak plain sense in still plainer language, he nevertheless exercised in the House of Commons an influence and even a dominion greater than Pitt the father, Pitt the son, Canning, or Castlereagh. He was the very model and type of an English gentleman. Modest without diffidence, confident without vanity, ardently desiring the good of his country without the slightest personal ambition, high minded, unaffected, sensible, well educated, in his political principles he was consistent, liberal, and enlightened, and he did more to extend the Empire beyond the seas than any statesman of the century.

“Suddenly, while at the zenith of his power, he became attacked by a virulent disease, which within a week proved fatal. His burial was a public one, and even until to-day no man who has occupied his place has shown such tact, forethought, and eminent statecraft. England still mourns his death, and will continue to do so for a long time to come. Had he lived, there would not now have been that deplorably small margin between the strength of the German and British fleets. While he lived he upheld the ‘two-Power standard’ as a reality. By his death the strong man for the Navy was taken from us, and alas! his mantle has not fallen on the shoulders of any of his successors.

“And to-day, in the afternoon of the day mentioned in this record of fact, I have, by merest chance, discovered a most romantic and remarkable circumstance—one that has held me completely astounded and staggers belief.

“Sworn to secrecy, I am penning this record to be attached to my will, in order that you, my executors, alone shall learn the remarkable truth which I desire and direct shall remain undisclosed for at least ten years after my death, when it may be published in whatever manner you may think most fitting.

“My bewildering discovery was made in the following circumstances. This afternoon, at three o’clock, I called at a house, number 78 Charlwood Street, Pimlico, there to consult a certain gentleman named Richard Goodrick, a retired schoolmaster, whose hobby is the collection of curios. I was, unfortunately, by no means a welcome guest, though we had been friends through many years. I went there with a distinct yet most unusual object, for I carried with me negotiable securities to the extent of fifty thousand pounds, ready to hand to him in exchange for a certain secret which he held. I had learnt one amazing fact, and desired to learn yet another. My negotiations were, alas! unsuccessful. The old gentleman’s anger was aroused, and…”

There the uneven manuscript ended. That was all. In the act of penning that last sentence he had been struck down by a stealthy, unknown hand.

The chief, who had been looking over the detective’s shoulder as he read, exclaimed:

“That’s really very curious, Medland. I wonder what secret could this man in Charlwood Street possess that was worth fifty thousand pounds to Sir George? It was unfortunate that he did not live to conclude his statement.”

“Yes,” replied the other, scanning the unfinished document. “But I can’t see what the mention of a dead statesman refers to. He seems to have commenced by eulogising some dead friend.”

“It is a mysterious and tantalising record, to say the least,” declared his chief. “And the more extraordinary now that the man he visited to-day—the man with the secret—has also been assassinated.”

“Well, the statesman, whoever he was, who died eighteen years ago could have had no hand in the affair—that’s very clear. He can’t concern us,” declared Medland. “Somebody else wanted to learn the secret of this old man Goodrick, that’s very evident.”

It was still dark as the car approached Victoria Station, whence a stream of early workmen were emerging, and, turning up Vauxhall Bridge Road, soon pulled up before the house in Charlwood Street, a house of the typical London type with area, one window beside the neat front door, and two windows above leading out upon a rickety iron balcony.

Wagner opened the door, and as the inspector entered said in a low voice of suppressed excitement:

“There’s a very strange mystery here, sir. We knocked the people up—a Mr. and Mrs. Ayres, who are the occupiers—and they told us that their lodger, an old gentleman named Goodrick, had gone out about six o’clock last night and had not returned. In face of your orders we were not satisfied, so we asked to see his rooms—and we found him dead in the sitting-room yonder.”

The trio passed along the narrow passage where, at the foot of the stairs, stood the frightened landlady and her husband.

“We ’ad no idea ’e’d come in!” exclaimed the white-faced woman. “We didn’t ’ear ’im, though we left the door on the latch at ’alf-past twelve, in case ’e came in. My ’usband and I listened—but we ’eard nothing.”

“No sound at all?” asked Medland quickly.

“None—till the police banged at the front door and woke us up with a start. They gave us a terrible turn, I can tell you.”

Medland grunted and followed Wagner into the small, stuffy little room heaped with curios, where the flaring gas-jet revealed the body of Richard Goodrick lying near the fireplace, crouched with his knees to his chin, quite dead.

“We’ve found no weapon—only this,” exclaimed Wagner, handing his chief an old flint-lock horse-pistol, “and it hasn’t been fired for years.”

“Didn’t you hear any sound?” asked Medland of Mrs. Ayres, for it seemed incredible.

“Well, sir, I did ’ear a sound in the night—a sharp, dull sound, but I thought it were somethink out in the street. It must ’ave been the street door. I ’ad no idea poor old Mr. Goodrick ’ad been murdered.”

“What time was it, do you think?”

“Well, as far as I can guess, it must ’ave been nearly three o’clock. I recollect a-’earing Big Ben a-chiming the three-quarters past two. It was soon after that.”

“This is a queer sort of abode,” remarked the chief, glancing around. “He must have been a rather quaint character, I should think.”

“Yes, he was—according to all accounts, sir,” interposed Wagner. “He was a very snappy old chap of a rather quarrelsome disposition. His movements were often mysterious.”

“Much known about him?” inquired Medland.

“Nothing, except that he’s lodged here for years, and was a retired schoolmaster. He was once second master at Dulwich College, it appears. He was sometimes eccentric in his habits, but usually went to bed early and rose early. He was a very studious man, always immersed in his books.”

“Mrs. Ayres,” exclaimed Medland, “did your lodger have a visitor yesterday afternoon—a well-dressed man, with a rather red, pimply face?”

“Yes, sir. ’E stayed about an hour and a ’alf, and they were shut in together a-talkin’ business.”

“Had you ever seen that gentleman before?”

“Never, sir, to my knowledge. Mr. Goodrick seldom, if ever, had any visitors.”

“Who were the persons who visited him?”

“Well, sir, there was my brother-in-law, Tom Macquire, who lives out at Ealin’, and old Mr. Mellini, the Italian priest, who lives up Denbigh Street. They were ’is two closest friends. ’E was a very reserved man, as you might say. ’E never spoke of ’is business or affairs to anybody. But oh! it’s terrible,” she broke forth, “terrible to think that ’e should be murdered like this!”

“Yes, Mrs. Ayres,” replied the detective calmly. “It’s quite plain that your lodger has been murdered. Somebody crept behind him and struck him with some sharp instrument which had been poisoned.”

“But who could have done it?” asked her bewildered husband, an insignificant little man with a large grey moustache.

“Somebody who had a grudge against him, I should fancy,” replied Medland. “You say he was a rather quarrelsome man. Did he keep any money here? If so, robbery might have been a motive,” he added, recollecting the fifty thousand pounds admitted by Sir George that he had conveyed there.

“I don’t think ’e ever kept much ’ere,” was the good woman’s reply. “ ’E always paid ’is bill regularly, but ’e wasn’t too flush o’ funds. ’E spent it all on ’is curiosities. Sometimes ’e went away for days an’ days.”

“He bought all these antiques,” remarked the detective. “He must have had money to do so. We’ll have to search the place,” he added, gazing around in bewilderment upon the hopeless chaos. A marine-store dealer’s could not have contained a greater variety of articles than did that narrow little back sitting-room.

The doctor—the same divisional surgeon who had earlier in the night been called to Carlton House Terrace—summoned by telephone, arrived and made an examination of the dead man. Life had been extinct about three hours, as far as he could judge. In the nape of the neck, just among the short hair, was a tiny puncture, exactly as in the case of Sir George Ravenscourt.

“The manner in which the deceased has been done to death is certainly peculiar,” declared the doctor. “To me it seems as though the victim had been seated in this arm-chair and fallen asleep, when the murderer, entering, had with fiendish triumph crept up and struck the blow. See!” he added, pointing to the mark, “there is every evidence that death was caused in that way.”

Medland searched the dead man’s pockets. In them he found nothing but an old-fashioned red handkerchief, a couple of newspaper cuttings regarding an electoral contest in Dorset, four and sixpence in silver, and an old envelope addressed to Goodrick.

“This Mr. Mellini! Did he visit him frequently?” asked Medland of Mrs. Ayres.

“Not very often, sir. ’E was ’ere about three days ago,” was the woman’s reply. “Mr. Goodrick called ’im Don Mario.”

The detectives examined the lock of the front door, but found no trace of it having been tampered with.

“The assassin must have entered with a key,” said Medland.

“Or perhaps the guilty person might have been in here when the victim came in,” remarked the doctor.

“Possibly,” said Medland. “Yet the chief mystery is the connecting link between this tragedy and the death of Sir George Ravenscourt. Was the assassin one and the same person?”

“I’m inclined to suspect so,” remarked the chief. “Why should Sir George desire that record to be destroyed, unless he feared some evil result?”

“What evil result could he fear?” asked Medland, “save that, in the terror of his dying moments, he did not recollect how much he had written, or the extent of the truth which the record contained.”

“There was evidently some great mystery surrounding this man,” the chief said, pointing to the rigid body. “When you have cleared that up, Medland, the rest should not be difficult. The priest Don Mario should be seen.”

“I quite agree,” replied the eminent detective, his eyes searching around the narrow, overcrowded room. “There’s some very remarkable connection between the two crimes. If we are to be successful, no word of what has really happened must become known by the Press. We must give them a bogus story, and then pursue our inquiries unhampered by Press comments, or the publication of ‘latest details.’ ”

“Exactly. You must arrange that at the coroner’s court it must appear a case of suicide. Understand,” the other said, turning to the landlady and her husband, “Mr. Goodrick swallowed poison. That is the report we shall give to the world. If the reporters ask you anything, just tell them that it was a clear case of suicide. Then leave the rest to us.”

“Very well, sir,” was Mrs. Ayres’s response. “We’ll do exactly as you say, sir. But it wasn’t suicide at all.”

“Of course not. But in order to evade our inquisitive friends of the Press that is the verdict which must be given before the coroner. It will clear the ground for Inspector Medland and his officers. We must find the assassin at all costs. The whole affair is most remarkable, for the mystery seems to have increased rather than diminished.”

CHAPTER IV.

YET ANOTHER PROBLEM

MARKS of several finger-prints were found upon the front door, while a quantity of tinder found in the fireplace was carefully collected for subsequent examination.

Expert detectives that they were, they went to work quietly and methodically, Medland taking charge of the inquiry and directing operations.

The body of the unfortunate Goodrick was conveyed upstairs to the narrow back bedroom and laid upon the bed covered with a sheet, a grim object in the cold grey dawn.

The room, though clean, was of meagre dimensions, the walls adorned with prints cut from the illustrated papers, while on the mantelshelf was a collection of valuable bronzes, some of them exquisite works of art and undeniably “museum pieces.” Over the bed hung a beautiful Madonna of the Tuscan school in a carved frame of tarnished gilt.

Below, the police officers rummaged the littered sitting-room to see if there were any papers which might reveal anything concerning the dead man’s friends.

“I don’t think ’e ’ad many friends,” declared the worthy landlady, as she watched the detectives methodically turning over the old man’s priceless collection of “old rubbish,” as she termed it. “ ’E never wrote a letter above once or twice all the time we’ve knowed ’im. Sometimes, as I’ve said to my ’usband, I fancy ’e was a-concealing ’imself from ’is relations. ’E never spoke of kith nor kin, and ’e ’ad no great love for strangers either—except the old priest. I once took in a young man lodger, and oh! it annoyed ’im awful. ’E was a funny old sort, I can tell you. When Mr. Mellini came they always talked in Italian.”

“Curious that you didn’t hear any sound, Mrs. Ayres,” Medland remarked.

“We ’eard the door shut, no doubt, but we didn’t know what it wor.”

Wagner and his colleague were busy turning over the miscellaneous pile of antiques of all sorts, from bits of moth-eaten tapestry to fine but tarnished objects in old silver, chalices, cups, reliquaries, and the rest. Coloured prints of value, parchment rolls with big seals attached, old maps, and other documents lay about, while upon antique furniture, moth-eaten and shabby, were piled pictures, china, and bric-à-brac of all descriptions, sufficient to stock a fair-sized shop.

“ ’E never went out but what ’e brought ’ome somethink for me to clean up and polish,” Mrs. Ayres declared. “ ’E used to give ridiculous prices for them bits of old cracked china and rusty swords an’ daggers an’ things. Why, ’e’d think nothink of givin’ ten or fifteen pounds for one o’ them old books over there. Sheer madness, I call it!”

The dust raised by the officers was suffocating as they turned out every corner in their hasty search for any of the old man’s secreted correspondence. Medland felt that there must be something there which would throw light upon the dead man’s friends.

Wagner remarked that the old fellow seemed to buy anything, whether complete or not, as he held up the centre of the old Sheffield-plate candelabrum. Then, ignorant that within its fluted column reposed one of Richard Goodrick’s greatest treasures, he cast it aside as rubbish.

Detectives are not usually connoisseurs, yet Medland, who had a few “old things” at his home at Brixton, saw that, whoever the dead man was, he must have been an educated person and in possession of considerable means.

Just after half-past eight there came a sharp ring at the hall door, and a telegraph-boy handed in a reply-paid message addressed to the dead man.

Medland opened it eagerly and found that it had been dispatched from the Charing Cross office at seven-twenty-five, and read:

“Appeal to you most earnestly to reconsider your decision. When and where can you meet me this evening. I do not wish to re-visit Charlwood Street.—RAVENSCOURT.”

“Why!” cried the inspector, “here is Sir George, who is dead, telegraphing to his dead friend! I must go at once to the telegraph office and see the original of this message. A dead man has asked for a reply from the dead!”

Entering the car again with the chief, he drove rapidly along Victoria Street and Whitehall, and was quickly in conversation with the clerk who had received the mysterious message.

It was, he saw, written in a rapid, educated hand.

“A youth about nineteen handed it in,” said the clerk. “He was a tall, slim, clean-shaven young man in a dark blue suit.”

That was all the information the inspector could gather. Therefore, re-entering the car, he called at the house of mourning in Carlton House Terrace, and showed the original of the telegram to Lady Ravenscourt, who, terribly broken down, was undecided whether it was in her husband’s handwriting.

The only explanation was that Sir George had written the message over-night and had given it to someone to take to the Charing Cross office. The person in question had failed to do so until this morning.

After consultation with the two police officers on duty at the house, the inspector returned to Scotland Yard, where he dropped his chief, and then went to Don Mario’s address in Denbigh Street, only to find that he had left his lodgings about ten days before. Mr. Goodrick had called one morning, and soon afterwards the lodger had paid his bill and left.

Wagner, his face and hands dirty and his clothes covered with the dust of years, was still busy turning over the miscellaneous collection of odds and ends.

“He was a bit of a miser, sir,” exclaimed the detective-sergeant as the inspector entered the room in Charlwood Street. “See this!” And he exhibited an old leather bag filled with sovereigns, which he had found locked in the bottom cupboard of a Sheraton sideboard.

Medland was much puzzled. He could see no connection between the tragedy in society and the one out of it. And yet there was, he felt, some strange and remarkable connection. It seemed as though the assassin, having killed Sir George, had walked boldly and deliberately out of the house, slamming the door after him, and had then gone to Charlwood Street and there committed the second crime.

The police surgeon had, during Medland’s absence, made a further examination of the body upstairs, and now, on his return, descended and, in an eager voice, called the detective aside.

“There’s some great mystery surrounding the deceased,” he said excitedly. “While I was making an examination I discovered a very significant fact—his beard is a false one!”

Medland’s lips became compressed.

“Then he was disguised—eh?”

“No doubt,” declared the doctor. “That beautiful beard, which has been so much admired here in Charlwood Street, was not his own.”

Medland went upstairs and gazed upon the dead white face, now devoid of beard. Then, with the mystery increased by the discovery, he sought Mrs. Ayres, who was in the regions below.

“Lor’ bless yer, sir, we knowed that,” she laughed. “Mr. Goodrick wore a false beard these past six years. ’E was very proud of ’is beard, but one day, when ’e wor reading with a lamp, ’e upset it, an’ all ’is whiskers got singed off. So ’e went to a wig maker’s an’ got a new ’un. ’E didn’t like to be seen without ’is beard, for ’e was very peculiar like. Sometimes ’e’d alter ’is features with paint and things.”

“Then he always wore his false beard?”

“Always, sir. I never saw ’im without it.”

The woman’s husband was a retiring, inoffensive man, and left all the talking to his wife. Dazed and puzzled, he hardly spoke.

Mrs. Ayres declared that she now recollected how her eccentric lodger on the previous evening, when she brought in his tea, seemed very fidgety and nervous.

“ ’E turned ’is face from me as if ’e wished to avoid me. I wonder what ’e ’ad on ’is mind?”

In response to further inquiry the gossiping woman said that he looked white and anxious, with a strange, haunted expression upon his face. But the detectives disregarded her statement as mere imagination.

Medland was a very experienced officer who had successfully conducted many very intricate cases; but none, he admitted within himself, had been so full of curious features as the present.

He noted many small points which his assistant had overlooked.

But what was the motive? Why should Sir George, feeling himself dying, seek to remove all traces of his secret visit to Charlwood Street? The affair was a complete enigma, and the only chance of a solution lay in keeping the actual facts out of the papers.

Already most of the London journals contained a brief paragraph recording the sudden death of Sir George Ravenscourt and hinting at suicide; but of the death of the obscure recluse in Pimlico there was no mention.

Throughout the day many inquiries were set afoot by Scotland Yard. At noon a council of the heads of the various branches of the Criminal Investigation Department had been held, as is usual in important cases, when all the known facts were thoroughly discussed and dissected. Then the whole machinery of the higher branch of the Metropolitan Police was set in motion, and the most searching investigation was being made into the recent movements and correspondence of the Baronet.

At Carlton House Terrace the big house with the wide portico and drawn blinds was plunged into mourning. Poor Lady Ravenscourt remained inconsolable, while Maidee sat with her hour after hour, weeping in sympathy.

Telegrams of condolence were showered upon the widow in hundreds, and there was a constant stream of callers.

Towards eight o’clock, tired out with crying, her ladyship lay down and slept upon the sofa in her pretty boudoir upstairs, whereupon Maidee rose and, leaving her on tiptoe, went to her own room, where she hastily put on a black walking-frock and a hat with a black fall.

As she stood before her big mirror, removing the traces of tears from her eyes, she presented a handsome picture. Hair black as raven’s wing, dressed low, formed a frame to a pensive face full of energy and expression. Her large eyes were dark and penetrating; her eyebrows, strongly marked and almost straight, would perhaps have imparted too decided a character to her young head if a charming expression of candour and naïveté had not given her the countenance of a child rather than that of a woman.

Maidee was just twenty, sweet-faced, graceful, charming, and accomplished. A splendid linguist, speaking Italian, German, and French with fluency, she sang sweetly, played tennis well, was a good partner at bridge, and was highly popular in the smart political set in which Lady Ravenscourt moved.

She glanced at the little silver clock upon her dressing-table and saw that it was already half-past eight.

“I must not be late,” she murmured aloud, “or he will think I’m detained, and will not wait.”

Hurriedly she tied her veil, and, drawing on a pair of black gloves, put on her long fur coat, and descended the stairs.

“I shan’t be very long, Burgess,” she said as she passed him. “Lady Ravenscourt is sleeping just now.”

“Very well, miss,” replied the stout butler, as he let her out and watched her turn the corner in the darkness by the statue towards the Athenæum Club.

Believing that she had gone upon some errand for her ladyship, it did not strike him at all curious that she should walk out at that hour. Yet, had he followed her, his curiosity would certainly have been aroused.

She was aware, of course, that some man named Goodrick, whom her uncle had visited a few hours before his death, had also been found dead, but no details of the curious affair had been told the ladies by the police, while the evening papers were still silent upon the subject.

She crossed Waterloo Place and ascended Regent Street as far as Piccadilly Circus, where she hailed a passing taxi, and, giving the man an address, entered the conveyance.

The cab, turning back, crossed Trafalgar Square, and quickly sped along Whitehall, crossed Westminster Bridge, continuing to the Elephant and Castle, and afterwards proceeded along the populous Walworth Road until, suddenly, it turned into a short, quiet, obscure thoroughfare known as Wansey Street. Here all the grimy eight-roomed houses were uniform, with basements, and each with eight front-door steps.

Before one of these, a decidedly dark and dismal abode, the girl alighted, and, ascending the steps, hurriedly rang the bell. Her arrival was evidently expected. A pale-faced lad, whom she greeted as “Harry,” admitted her, and, passing in, she pushed open the door of the shabby sitting-room on the right, where a man rose slowly, his thin white hand outstretched in greeting as he cried:

“Ah, Maidee! Why, you are late—oh! so late. I really feared that you were prevented from coming. And I wanted to see you—very particularly to-night—very particularly indeed.”

“You know the terrible affair that has happened, Uncle John?” exclaimed the girl breathlessly. “How——”

“I know! I know! Poor Sir George!” interrupted the man in a low, husky voice.

And as he held her hand the light of the gas-jet falling full upon his face revealed him to be a thin, fragile-looking old gentleman, with a white beard and dark, penetrating eyes—an old man, wearing a faded, old, dark blue dressing-gown—the exact counterpart of the mysterious Richard Goodrick, the eccentric collector now lying dead in that narrow room in a back street in Pimlico.

“Sit down, Maidee,” he said in a low, intense voice, closing the door and locking it carefully behind her. “Sit down,” and he drew a chair to the fire. “I must have a very serious talk with you, my dear child. I—I want to tell you something—something very strange.”

CHAPTER V.

IS ABOUT UNCLE JOHN

MAIDEE LAMBTON, loosening her rich furs, seated herself in the frowsy old arm-chair before the fire, while the quick-eyed old man before her stood upon the hearthrug regarding her long and earnestly, as though hesitating to place confidence in her.

The room, very cheaply furnished, bore the unmistakable air of “weekly payments.” The furniture, covered with embossed red velvet, had once been gaudy, but was now faded and rickety. The recesses each side of the fireplace were filled with dwarf cupboards, upon which were displayed cheap ornaments reposing upon wool mats, while the post of honour was occupied by a case of stuffed birds, much moth-eaten and decayed.

Suddenly the old man turned with a start, saying: “This light is too strong for my eyes to-night,” and crossing to the gas-jet beside the fireplace, he lowered it, apologising for doing so, and adding: “Of late my sight is growing very bad. The glare of these incandescent gas mantles tries them terribly.”

Maidee was surprised. It was the first time through all the years they had been acquainted that old Mr. Ambrose—for that was the name by which he was known to her—had complained of his eyesight.

Left an orphan at the age of three, Lady Ravenscourt had adopted her, and she had lived with Sir George and his wife as their niece, for she usually called them uncle and aunt. After a series of governesses, she had been sent to Eastbourne to school, and afterwards to Versailles and Dresden, concluding with a year in Rome and Florence. It was only about nine months before that she had returned to make her début, and to live permanently at Carlton House Terrace. She had been presented at the last Court, and had a great many admirers, some of them most eligible young men, while on coming of age she would become entitled to nearly eight thousand a year from her late father.

Her acquaintance with old Mr. Ambrose, whom she always called “Uncle John,” was certainly a very romantic one, and began fully twelve years before.

Seated with Miss Denman, her governess, one spring afternoon in Kensington Gardens, the old gentleman had sat upon the same seat, and entered into conversation with them. At first Miss Denman, the very soul of discretion, was disinclined to talk, but, finding him to be quite a harmless and benevolent old gentleman, they chatted. He seemed much struck with little Maidee, who in those days wore her hair tied at the sides with white ribbons, and promised that if they came there next day he would bring her some chocolates.

At first the governess was reluctant, but Miss Maidee, child-like, was anxious for a present, and finally persuaded Miss Denman to take her to keep the appointment.

To the child’s great delight the chocolates proved to be a most beautiful and expensive box, so that Miss Denman marvelled that an old gentleman so meanly dressed could afford to give such elaborate presents. But he seemed infatuated with the child, and thus there commenced Maidee’s curious friendship with an old and somewhat eccentric man who was a perfect stranger.

At first Miss Denman was always with her when they met, and was nothing loath to receive now and then a little present for herself, but as Maidee grew older, and was allowed to go about alone, she grew into the habit of meeting him in secret at various places, and sitting at his side, chattering as a young girl will chatter.

He seemed never tired of hearing all about her home life—of Sir George and his wife, of the brilliant dinners and dances at Carlton House Terrace, and of the visitors who called there.

Sometimes she would notice an expression of sadness, as a deep sigh would escape him when she told him of various people and described their idiosyncrasies. She, petted by everyone who called at her adopted father’s house, already knew half the great ones of London.

And as she grew up she often wondered who the strange old man could really be, and who were his friends.

Once, when she was about fourteen, he had said to her in reply to a question:

“Ah! yes, child. Once I had very many friends, just as you have; but that was long ago. To-day I—I have only you.”

“Only me!” she had echoed, opening her big eyes widely.

And he had smiled at her, and taken her small hand in his own.

“Yes, Maidee,” he had said. “Of course, you don’t know all. You will, perhaps, some day—after I am gone.”

She had not understood him, and sat puzzled. His clothes were old and shabby, his hat frayed and worn, and his old ebony stick, with an ivory ball for handle, was a relic of an age bygone.

They generally met in one or other of the parks, but most frequently in Kensington Gardens, for it was more rural and quieter there.

At rare intervals he would bend and print a fervent kiss upon her white, childish brow; and to her the knowledge that such clandestine meetings, if ever discovered, would result in much trouble at home only added zest to the adventures.

Then she went away to school, and the meetings became few and infrequent. Yet they exchanged letters regularly. Indeed, never through all the years until that night had they been out of touch with one another.

As Maidee grew older she realised that her devoted friend was not so penurious as she had once imagined. True, he lived in cheap lodgings, and changed his abode very frequently; yet he never seemed to be in want of funds. Many little trifles he had given her as souvenirs, but on her eighteenth birthday he had met her at the lodgings he then occupied off the Old Kent Road, and presented her with a beautiful diamond necklet, which he desired her to wear beneath her dress as a token of his esteem and regard.

She wore it always. Even as she sat there in that shabby chair near the fire it was clasped about her white neck and concealed beneath her bodice. Sir George and his wife, of course, knew nothing of all this, for she was always careful to hide the valuable ornament, as she was also to conceal her strange friendship with the old fellow who seemed to lead such a lonely and erratic life.

“Maidee,” he said, crossing the half-darkened room, and seating himself on the opposite side of the fireplace, “I want you to tell me all about the terrible affair at home—all as far as you know. How was the murder discovered?”

She looked at him in surprise, for it suddenly occurred to her that the papers, though hinting at suicide, had not suggested murder.

“How do you know, Uncle John, that Sir George was murdered?” she asked him, looking across at his face hidden in the shadow. Her voice told him that she was greatly surprised at his question.

He started perceptibly and, fidgeting slightly in his chair, replied:

“Er—well—I—I, of course, saw what was in the papers, child, and jumped to a conclusion. Perhaps I’m wrong—eh?” And he cursed himself for his foolishness. The girl was no longer a child; he had forgotten that fact.

His remark had aroused faint suspicions within her mind. Always, through all these years, he had been deeply interested in Sir George’s sayings and doings. Was he now in possession of some secret knowledge concerning the tragedy? Or had he actually guessed the truth?

“Ah!” she replied, “you are not wrong. Sir George was no doubt killed while in the act of writing in his library.”

“By whom?”

“The police have not yet ascertained,” was her response. “He seemed to have written a record of some extraordinary character, for when Burgess discovered him he was still conscious, and begged him with his last breath to destroy what he had penned.”

“He desired to conceal it from the police—eh?”

“Yes.”

“And was it destroyed?”

“No; Burgess gave it to the police.”

“What was its nature?”

“I do not exactly know. Burgess showed it to my aunt, who ordered it to be given to the police. She told me that it gave the name of some man who lived in Pimlico.”

Ambrose started in his chair, and, bending forward towards her in sudden eagerness, asked in that curious husky voice of his:

“What did he write concerning him? Tell me. It is important that I should know—most important. Don’t conceal anything from me, child. Some day you will know the reason I ask this.”

“My aunt told me nothing—except that my uncle had put on record the fact that on the evening before his death he had visited the person in question, and made some extraordinary discovery.”

“A discovery!” gasped the old man, with a strange, haunted look. “Of what nature?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you must at once find out for me,” he said anxiously. “You say Burgess read what Sir George wrote before his death. Then he would tell you, if you asked him! The original you will not see, now that the police have possession of it. Burgess was a fool—an infernal fool!”

“Why?” asked the girl in surprise.

“He should have carried out his master’s wish, and destroyed it.”

“The reason he failed to do so was quite natural. It mentioned a man’s name.”

“A name Sir George evidently wished to conceal,” snapped the old man.

“Apparently so. And the reason of his eagerness has greatly puzzled the detectives.”

A grim smile crossed the old fellow’s features—a smile of cunning.

“No doubt they are puzzled,” he remarked, with a short, harsh laugh. “But, surely, Burgess should have carried out his master’s dying wish. You say he urged the butler to destroy what he had written?”

“Yes. And Burgess promised.”

“Then the man should have kept his promise. A promise to the dying should always be held sacred.”

“Save in such an event as occurred early this morning. For aught the police know, this man living in Pimlico may be the assassin! Perhaps he killed Sir George in order to prevent some secret of his being betrayed!”

“Who suggests that?” asked Ambrose quickly, again leaning forward in eagerness. “Do the police suspect it?”

“I am entirely unaware of their suspicions,” replied the girl. “During to-day Burgess has been submitted to the closest examination by one detective after another. The police informed my aunt this afternoon that they intended to presume suicide at the inquest, in order to be allowed a clear ground in which to hunt for the assassin.”

“Hardly fair to the dead man—is it?”

“Perhaps not, Uncle John; but if the murderer be brought to justice, then it is surely permissible. The truth will be cleared up afterwards,” Maidee said. “Inspector Medland apologised to me for the course they had decided upon at Scotland Yard, and assured me that, even in face of the verdict of suicide, every effort would be made to solve the mystery.”

“But they have no suspicion—eh?” asked the old man in a low, hard voice, scarce above a whisper.

“How can I tell?”

“The inspector did not mention this mysterious person living in Pimlico?” he asked anxiously.

“Well, yes—he did.”

“What did he say?”

“Only that Sir George had evidently made some remarkable discovery which he intended to place on record for the eyes of his executors only, and they, in turn, were to preserve the secret for ten years after his death.”

“Then, no doubt, the record upon which he was engaged when he was so swiftly and silently done to death revealed his discovery!” gasped the old man hoarsely.

His nails pressed themselves into his palms, for next instant he saw by the girl’s manner that, notwithstanding all the precautions he had taken, he had betrayed himself by his suggestion that Sir George’s death was not a case of suicide.

He had been a blundering idiot, a chattering fool—and had aroused her suspicions.

A hard, sinister light shone in the old man’s eyes. If the girl suspected, then she must be silenced! He could not afford to run any further risks.

CHAPTER VI.

SUSPICION!

JOHN AMBROSE was a very evasive old man. Age begets cunning. He was often garrulous and reminiscent, yet his abnormal brain was as clear, as retentive, and as shrewd as it had been in the mid-Victorian days of his prime.

His curious mannerisms, his sharp snappishness, his clever witticisms, and his withering sarcasm had held Maidee in awe ever since she had worn short frocks. One side of the crafty old fellow’s nature was hard and unbending, while the other was curiously sweet and sympathetic.

Instinctively she had known for years that the old gentleman was not exactly what he had represented himself to be. He was a man of mystery, and yet an obscure unit in the life of London. He was a born leader of men. His speech, his gesture, his refinement, and his manner, all betrayed that, though he might be shabby, even slovenly in his dress, yet he was a person apart, a man over whose words his fellow-men must ponder. Shrewd, tactful to evasiveness, and possessed of a devilish cunning, his was a unique personality.

He had a slow, deliberate, but extremely convincing way. If he gave utterance to a fact or made a declaration, his hearers believed it to be true. Men who knew him put faith in him—were hypnotised by his remarkable presence and by his clearness of expression, following him blindly whither he led them, for good or for evil.

Yet, with all this, he knew within himself that he had committed a fatal faux pas. Maidee Lambton had had her suspicions aroused! The suspicions of a girl of her age are not easily removed. He had been a fool—an arrant fool.

The girl sat silent. She was filled with wonder at the apparent slip the old man had made. And yet he had always been so kind and attached to her through all these years of their somewhat curious friendship.

He was eccentric, it was true, but eccentricity could not account for that intimate knowledge of the exact circumstances of Sir George’s death.

Through her mind ran reminiscences of how he had petted and spoiled her in her childhood; of their secret meetings; of his calm and good advice, and his apparent happiness whenever she was nigh.

Yes, there had been some strong yet inexplicable reason for his attachment. A thousand times in the pensive hours of her youth had she sat and wondered who could be this strange, shabby old gentleman who had taken such a deep and continued interest in her, and who had, one day about two years before, introduced her to a kindly old Italian priest, Don Mario.

Whenever she saw a Roman Catholic priest, she always recollected that calm, ascetic, soft-spoken old man who, on that well-remembered summer’s afternoon, had sat beside her in Kensington Gardens and chatted so quietly and yet with such thoroughness of heart.

Often she recollected his words—words of wise counsel. He openly expressed admiration of her beauty, yet at the same time warned her, in his soft, broken English, against the sins of the world and of society. “Love, my child,” he had said, “but be careful whom you love. This world of ours is so full of human wickedness, and nothing really is what it appears to be.”

Several times afterwards, when she met Uncle John, old Don Mario had been with him, and they had grown quite friendly. She had learned Italian at school, and she delighted to talk with the grave old priest in his own tongue.

For the past year, however, she had not seen him. He had returned to Italy, Uncle John had told her; returned without a word of farewell to her.

Though no longer in her teens, Ambrose still treated her with the same exquisite tenderness as he had done when she had worn her hair tied with ribbons.

“Maidee,” he said at last, in a low voice, after they had been silent for some time, “Sir George has fallen by an assassin’s hand, and we—you and I—must endeavour to fathom the mystery and bring the murderer to justice.”

“I am only too anxious, Uncle John,” replied the girl, her manner changing. “If I can help in any way I will certainly do so. How can I assist?”

“By carrying out certain instructions which I shall give you,” replied the old man. “Answer me a question: Have you ever spoken to your lover, Gordon Cunningham, regarding me?”

“Never. You have always imposed upon me a promise to keep our friendship a strict secret.”

The old fellow breathed a sigh of distinct relief.

“Yes,” he said; “it is best that we keep to ourselves the fact that we are acquainted. Your station in life is different from my own, you know. People would regard it as very strange if they knew that you, one of the smartest young girls in society, should come here to this obscure lodging in order to visit me.”

“Why should they? You have always been my good friend, Uncle John. Whenever I’ve been unhappy at home through my aunt’s uneven temper, I’ve always come to you, and you have kissed my tears away and cheered me up. How many times, when I was a little girl, have I shed tears and told you all my childish troubles?”

“And I have sympathised with you, dear,” said the old man, with a slight catch in his husky voice. “But all that is of the past. You’ve grown into womanhood—and you have a lover, an honest, strong-hearted fellow in young Gordon Cunningham.”

“You know him, then!” cried the girl, her face brightening, and yet remarking within herself that the old man’s voice sounded a little unnatural.

“Well, certain inquiries I made entirely satisfied me.”

“And you are really interested in my love affairs, Uncle John!” the girl laughed. She had always been used to calling him “Uncle John,” though, of course, he was a mere friend—a chance acquaintance, indeed.

“I am always interested in your well-being, Maidee. Ah!” he exclaimed, with a slight sigh, “you don’t know how very deeply you have entered into my poor lonely old heart. In the past your pretty face has cheered me, your sweet girlish smile has been as sunshine to me, and your chatter has roused me out of my dull, melancholy self. You are my own dear Maidee.”

“But why are you so lonely?” she asked, looking at him seriously in the dim light.

“You have asked me that question a thousand times before, child. Have I not always told you that my present life is of my own seeking? Once, long ago, I lost at a single blow all that made existence worth living, and I therefore cut adrift from it. I would fain forget every memory of it—if I only could. And in those early days of my disappointment and sorrow I found you—a wee child; and ever since I have regarded you as my dearest little friend.”

“Yes, Uncle John,” said the girl, not without a touch of deep emotion. “You have been more to me than any other friend I have ever had. And I have always kept sacred the pledge of secrecy you imposed upon me.”

“Never break that, child, for if you did—well”—he added in a low, changed voice—“if you did it might go very hard with me.”

“Hard with you!” she echoed, opening her fine eyes widely. “How?”

But the old fellow did not reply. He was ever evasive when she asked him any point-blank question.

“You suggested that we should combine together to endeavour to solve the mystery of my uncle’s death,” she said a few moments later.

“Yes. The police have yet to discover some very remarkable facts—facts which will, I know, greatly puzzle them,” he said. “The murder of Sir George was, as you surmise, no ordinary vulgar crime, but the work of a master hand. It was carefully planned and carried out with a deliberate attention to the most minute detail. The assassin ran no risk. He was too clever for that.”

“How do you know all this? You seem to possess a wider knowledge of the tragic affair than even the police themselves.”

“Do I?” he ejaculated, with a start. “I—I don’t think I do. The police have misled the Press—misled them purposely, of course. But, Maidee,” he added quickly, “you will ere long learn something else which will cause you great astonishment.”

“What?”

“You spoke of a man living in Pimlico.”

“The person mentioned in the statement which my uncle wrote immediately prior to his death?”

“Yes,” said the old gentleman, with a slight tremor in his thin voice. “Well, that man has also died!”

“Died!” she cried in surprise. “The police told me nothing of that.”

“Yes,” he too has been murdered. “Oh, don’t betray undue alarm,” he added quickly. “As I have told you, this affair is no ordinary crime. It is a mystery which the police will find impossible of solution. All the combined talent of Scotland Yard will fail to elucidate it if only——”

“If what?” asked the girl anxiously.

“If I make my own inquiries—and hold my tongue,” he said slowly.

“Then you know the truth, Uncle John!” she cried eagerly. “Tell me—do you know who it was who killed poor Sir George?”

“If I knew I should at once denounce the assassin,” was his severe rebuke. “Have I not suggested that you should assist me in carefully seeking a solution of the problem?”

“But you said that as long as you remained silent the police would be powerless to learn the truth,” the girl remarked.

“And I repeat it. It is for you and me to know the truth first—to establish the identity of the assassin, and we can then denounce him to the authorities. Already Scotland Yard recognises the perplexity of the case in the absence of any direct clues. Two men between whom some mysterious friendship existed, and who lived in different spheres of life, have been done to death without any apparent motive and in a manner utterly astounding. Sir George wrote something—some statement of fact, it would seem. You, on your part, must question Burgess regarding it, and let me know; if not the whole, then the gist of it. It is most important that I should know this at once. Will you commence by doing this for me?”

“Most certainly,” she replied eagerly. “I’ll question him to-morrow morning. When shall I see you?”

“At any hour you like to-morrow. I shall await you here all day. Learn all you can of Medland’s movements and the direction of his inquiries. Make pretence of assisting the police, and at the same time keep me well informed of all their actions.”

“But why?”

“Because I want to avenge Sir George’s death. The police must inevitably fail, because they lack certain knowledge which I possess. They will fail—and we shall triumph!” he added, with a keen, crafty expression in his intense dark eyes. “Remember,” he added, “that not a word is to be told to Gordon. He will, no doubt, question you closely regarding your uncle’s death, but to him you must carry out the fiction of the police—that it was suicide. To-morrow the inquest will be held. You will attend at the coroner’s court, for you may perhaps be called as a witness. Take careful note of all that transpires there, and detail it to me afterwards.”

“But you say that the man in Pimlico has also been murdered!” the girl said. “How have you learnt that? There is nothing in the papers concerning it.”

“I have no certain knowledge, except that as Sir George was killed there was every reason why the other man should be killed also.”

“In order, I suppose, to conceal some secret or other—eh?” asked Miss Lambton.

“Exactly. The secret is now in the hands of one person only—myself.”

“And, if divulged, it would account for this double crime?”

“Exactly. But before I tell the truth I desire, with your aid, child, to make quite certain of the identity of the assassin. Act as I direct you, I beg of you. Seek no reason for my actions, and do not trouble yourself regarding the many mysterious circumstances which must inevitably ensue in the course of our difficult inquiry—for it will be very difficult. Assist me, and leave all to me, and depend upon it we will together bring the murderer of poor Sir George to justice.”

“Very well,” she said. “I will question Burgess in the morning, and find out what was in that statement left by my uncle. Then I will come over here, and tell you all that I have ascertained.”

“Yes; but further,” said the old man, whose craft and cunning were unsurpassed, “when next you see Gordon he will probably question you very closely, for I anticipate that he may have learnt something—that he may have had his suspicions aroused. You must keep him in entire ignorance of everything—everything, remember! Though he may be your lover and devoted to you, as I know, yet he, by indiscretion, might spoil all our plans.”

“Am I to tell him nothing, then?” she asked, with a touch of disappointment, for she confided everything to her lover.

“Nothing—absolutely nothing. If you do, it will wreck all the plans I am now forming for the elucidation of the mystery. Gordon must remain in ignorance—just as the public must be kept ignorant of the amazing facts.”

“Did you happen to possess any knowledge of that mysterious man in Pimlico?” she asked, looking her friend straight in the face.

“Well, no,” he replied, not without a slight hesitancy, which she noticed. “I knew of his existence, it is true, and—and I know of his mysterious death.”

“Which is not yet recorded in the papers,” she added.

“I have already told you, child, that I am in possession of certain facts of which the police are unaware,” he said in a low, hoarse voice. “How I became possessed of them does not concern you. It is only for you to remain absolutely silent, keep your own counsel, and assist me in avenging the death of your unfortunate uncle.”

“That I promise most faithfully to do.”

“Then be very careful not to reveal my existence to Gordon Cunningham,” he urged. “He must suspect nothing—absolutely nothing, you understand!”

The girl had risen, buttoned up her rich fur coat to the throat, and taken up her muff.

“Very well, Uncle John,” she said. “If that is your decision, I will carry it out. I shall return to-morrow—about noon, I hope. I must get back now, for it is growing late,” she added anxiously.

He bent and, as was his habit, imprinted a kiss upon the girl’s white brow; then, taking her hand, with final injunctions, he unlocked the door and showed her out to the taxi which had been awaiting her.

John Ambrose stood upon the step for a few moments watching the tail-lamp of the taxi until it disappeared around the corner into the brilliantly-lit Walworth Road. Then the cunning old man turned, and, re-entering, closed the door, and passed back into his room.

Casting himself into the arm-chair which the girl had vacated, a grim smile crossed his thin, hard features, and, removing his white beard, he slowly smoothed his chin as he sat staring into the fire, thinking deeply.

“I wonder—I wonder if she really suspects me as an impostor and a fraud?” he muttered to himself, pulling his old dressing-gown around him. “I sincerely hope she did not detect anything unusual. It was foolish—very foolish of me to have the light full on; there is danger on every side. To-morrow I must pretend weakness of the eyes, and commence to wear spectacles. My eagerness to discover the assassin will mislead her. Yet how I wish I could get sight of that foolish record which George Ravenscourt left. Just like him—so fond of putting things down in black and white. Ah!” he sighed, “if I only knew exactly what it was he wrote I should be so much easier in mind. If perchance he has told them the truth—what then?”

And, holding his breath, his countenance blanched at the very thought.

Motionless he sat, his dark eyes fixed upon the dying embers, ignorant of the fact that in a deep doorway on the opposite side of the street a spare, ill-dressed man in a dark overcoat had been standing hidden for the past couple of hours intently watching the house, or that soon after the departure of his visitor the watcher had emerged from the shadow and, with a low chuckle, had walked leisurely up the quiet, dismal street and, like the taxi, had disappeared round the corner into the bustling main thoroughfare, where the bright street-lamps shone through the mist.

CHAPTER VII.

WITHHELD FROM THE PUBLIC

WHEN at noon next day Maidee Lambton again called at Wansey Street she found Uncle John wearing dark spectacles and complaining of his eyes.

“I had to go to the doctor this morning,” he told her, “and he ordered me to wear these ugly things.”

“Only for a time, I hope,” exclaimed the girl anxiously.

“For a month or two, at least,” he said. “See! I have to have the blinds half-down. It is so annoying not to be able to read. Books were my only pleasure, and now even they are debarred me,” added the old fellow dolefully.

Then the girl explained how she had questioned Burgess, but he had refused to satisfy her curiosity. The faithful servant had told her that it had been his master’s dying wish that the record should be destroyed, which meant that he desired to preserve his secret. At her ladyship’s orders he had handed the paper to the police, who would, no doubt, regard it as confidential.

She had rebuked Burgess for his silence, but the latter had declared it to be his duty, at the same time expressing regret at being unable to comply with her request.

“Then the fellow would tell you nothing—eh?” growled the old man, a mysterious figure in his dark, steel-rimmed spectacles.

“He refused. I argued with him, but he remained obdurate. He merely said that the paper contained a clue to the assassin.”

John Ambrose started perceptibly.

“Did he actually say that?” he gasped. “What else did he tell you?”

“Nothing more, except that the man in Pimlico was a secret friend of my uncle.”

“Did he tell you anything concerning the man in question—anything contained in your uncle’s statement?”

“No. Whatever he knows he is keeping strictly to himself.”

“He has a motive in doing so.”

“Oh, yes! He believes he is serving his master’s interests.”

“Bosh!” cried the old fellow impatiently. “He must be made to speak. You must compel him to tell you what that record contained. Use your powers of persuasion.”

“I have done so all I could—but he refused. He was devoted to Sir George.”

“I know—I know that. And if we could but let him see that we are working in the interests of justice, he would tell us everything.”

“But how can we?” asked the girl. “How can we, when we are working in such secrecy?”

For a moment the old man was silent.

“Yes,” he repeated at last; “we are working in secret. But, until we know what revelations Sir George made before his death, we are, unfortunately, unable to move.”

“How can we learn?”

“You alone can induce Burgess to speak,” said the old man seriously. “You must use all your woman’s tact. Approach him again this evening—after you have returned from the inquest. Come back again to me to-night, and tell me what you have discovered.”

Then, after a further conversation, the old man giving the girl certain directions, she re-entered the taxi, and returned to Carlton House Terrace.

At three o’clock the narrow, gloomy coroner’s court at Westminster was crowded, for, owing to the hints of suicide, considerable public interest had been aroused by the death of Sir George Ravenscourt. An eager crowd of reporters and their messengers were present, while, mixing with the general public, were several famous police officers.

Evidence of identification having been given by Miss Irene Lambton, the butler Burgess, in his best black suit, went into the witness-box, and described how he had discovered his master dying. No mention was made of the baronet’s last wish or of the unfinished manuscript left upon the writing-table. The brief evidence had been carefully prepared by the police.

In answer to the foreman of the jury—a little, bald-headed man—the butler stated that he had heard the front door close, and as his master did not ring, he entered the library to see if he required anything. On making the tragic discovery, he alarmed the household and telephoned to the police.

The next witness was Inspector Medland, who told the court that he had been summoned by telephone, and, on proceeding to the house, found the deceased lying dead in his library.

“There was evidence that he had fallen from the chair at the writing-table,” he added. “At first we could find no reason, but my assistant, Detective-Sergeant Wagner, will give further evidence.”

Wagner, on going into the box, produced a hypodermic syringe, which, he stated, had been found behind a chair, and had probably been used by the deceased to put an end to his life.

The syringe having been duly identified by Burgess as one missing from a case in his master’s dressing-room, the coroner asked the expectant jury if they had any questions to put.

“I would like to know, sir, whether the police have ascertained whether there was any motive which might lead Sir George to take his own life—any financial trouble, for instance?” asked one of them.

“I’m afraid we are not here to discover motives,” the coroner replied quickly. “We have merely to decide the cause of death—whether by natural causes, accident, wilful murder, or suicide. Call the divisional surgeon.”

The doctor, sharp-eyed, dapper man, who held his silk hat in his hand, stepped into the box, and, taking the oath with a professional air, stated that he was called by the police, and found Sir George dead.

“He had been dead about half an hour—not more,” added the doctor.

“And, in your opinion, what was the cause of death?”

“I made a post-mortem. Death was due to poison—injected.”

“Could a syringe such as the one just shown have produced death?” asked the coroner, looking up from the depositions he had been carefully writing on sheets of blue official foolscap.

“Certainly. I understand that Sir George was, unfortunately, in the habit of having recourse to drugs. It was probably an overdose, wilfully taken.”

“Any questions to ask the doctor?” inquired the coroner sharply of the jury. “The deceased seems to have taken a double dose of morphia.”

There was no response. The twelve respectable tradesmen of the city of Westminster were apparently quite satisfied.

“I will ask you, gentlemen of the jury,” said the coroner, addressing them, “having heard the evidence available, to return what verdict you honestly believe to be the true one. I might, perhaps, point out that we have had evidence of a hypodermic syringe being found in Sir George’s library—an unusual place for it—and that, as you have seen, it undoubtedly contained a deadly drug. If you consider this, in conjunction with what you have heard, sufficient proof that deceased died by his own hand, then you will return a verdict to that effect—wilful or accidental. If, on the contrary, you do not accept the evidence, then perhaps you may wish to adjourn the inquiry. For my own part,” he added, carelessly placing down his pen, “I have no hesitation in deciding at what verdict I, as a juryman, would arrive.”

“Neither have we, I think, sir,” remarked the foreman, glancing inquiringly along the line of his colleagues. “There can be no doubt that the unfortunate case is one of suicide while temporarily insane.”

“Then may I take that as your verdict, gentlemen?” asked the coroner, with a brisk, businesslike air. The jury agreed without a single dissentient.

Then, five minutes later, the court of inquiry rose, and everyone filed out into the street.

Two hours afterwards, in that same sombre room, where the gas was now lit, and where another jury had been empanelled, the same coroner held an inquiry into the death of Richard Goodrick, late of 78, Charlwood Street, Pimlico.

Only two reporters were present, and the attendance of the general public was small. There had been no mention of the death in the papers; indeed, the only notice given of it to the public was upon the formal baize-covered notice-board hanging in the coroner’s office in Victoria Street, whereon the hours of inquests are recorded for the information of all who care to attend.

But the same police officers who had attended the inquest upon Sir George Ravenscourt were present, several of them seated upon the benches with the public.

Not more than thirty persons were present; but among them, sitting alone at the extreme back of the court, half in the shadow, was an elderly, clean-shaven man in neat brown overcoat and velvet collar. He wore dog-skin gloves, and his hair was parted down the back in the dandified fashion of the early ’sixties. Apparently he had dropped in out of mere curiosity, and quickly became intensely attracted by the seriousness of the investigation.

Yet in his eyes was a crafty, sinister expression, about his mouth a strange hardness, while his gloved fingers twitched nervously as he sat impatiently awaiting the opening of the inquiry.

None—perhaps not even Maidee herself—would have recognised in that smartly-dressed old gentleman the shabby and negligent Uncle John, the man who lived in that meagre, obscure lodging off the Walworth Road. And yet it was he!

He had actually come there, boldly and openly, to listen to the curious story of Richard Goodrick’s decease!

Unnoticed he sat while the formalities of swearing in the jury were proceeded with. Yet a close observer might have detected his keen apprehension of what might be forthcoming.

Inspector Medland, brisk and active as before, was present, and was the first witness after the jury had viewed the body of the eccentric recluse of Pimlico.

“From information received,” he deposed, “I went, on the morning of the eighteenth, to 78, Charlwood Street, Pimlico, where I saw the deceased lying in a back room on the ground floor. He was dead. I searched the room, and on making inquiry found that he was a person of somewhat eccentric habits. He had lived as lodger in the house in question for eighteen years, but, according to information I have gathered, he has of late experienced some difficulty in paying his rent.”

“Ah! financial difficulties!” exclaimed the coroner. “The old story—eh?”

“I think so, sir.”

“Poison, I understand?” remarked the coroner casually.

“Yes, sir. I produce a bottle,” and he handed in a small phial. “It has contained chloral.”

Old John Ambrose sat breathless and open-mouthed. How much did the police really know?

Mrs. Ayres then gave some details regarding her lodger’s idiosyncrasies, telling the jury how, on the evening of the tragic affair, he was absent—which was quite unusual.

“I suppose you’ve seen that bottle before—eh?” asked the coroner, to which the talkative woman replied in the affirmative, chattering on with many reminiscences of “poor Mr. Goodrick.”

The coroner, however, cut her short, and asked for the medical evidence, which was to the effect that death had been due to chloral.

“Suicide, I suppose?” asked the coroner in his dry, matter-of-fact way.

In reply to this the doctor merely shrugged his shoulders.

“Apparently this old man became reduced in circumstances,” remarked the coroner, turning to the jury. “We have it in evidence that he was proud and independent, and extremely punctilious regarding his payments. His poverty probably preyed upon his mind, as it does on some men. But, of course, it is for you, gentlemen, to say how deceased came by his death—whether accidentally, or by his own hand.”

The divisional surgeon had left the witness-box, and the evidence had been concluded. An obscure, unknown man, living in a back street in Pimlico, had been found dead. The affair was devoid of any public interest, for the police had allowed no word to leak out regarding the strange connection between the two crimes. They were carefully concealing the facts so as not to arouse the suspicion of the real culprit.

The worthy jury, ignorant of the truth, therefore, without hesitation, returned a verdict of suicide, little dreaming that they were investigating as strange a tragedy as ever puzzled the Metropolitan Police.

The reporters rose, and left in disappointment that the case had furnished no “copy” to take the eye of a news-editor. The neat, clean-shaven old man in the corner breathed more freely and rose with a low chuckle, making his way out into the street.

“Goodrick’s secret is still safe—still safe!” he murmured to himself as he made his way through the darkness and falling rain in the direction of Westminster Bridge. “Yet I must still be careful—very careful, or I may betray myself to Maidee. Woman’s intuition is far keener than man’s. I may be able to fool the police, to trick them, and to evade them. But Maidee is a far more difficult problem. Yet, fortunately for me, the only man who spoke with Richard Goodrick—the only man who knew his secret—is dead—dead!”

And he laughed aloud in intense satisfaction as, approaching the bridge, he bent his head to the tearing, winter wind sweeping up the Thames.

“I wonder whether she suspects anything,” he added between his teeth. “I wonder—I wonder if I am acting the part sufficiently well?”

CHAPTER VIII.

THE MAN OF THE MOMENT

A TALL, slim, dark-haired, athletic-looking young man of twenty-six was lounging in a big arm-chair in the saloon of Boodle’s, idly smoking a cigarette and gazing out into the winter gloom of St James’s Street.

His clean-shaven, aquiline face showed shrewdness and cleverness, but his knit brows betrayed a deep seriousness somewhat alien to his nature. He was a merry, easy-going, good-looking fellow, very popular in the clubs and in society, for he was hailed on every hand as a coming man.

The younger son of Gilbert Cunningham, of Cunningham, in Devonshire, who had held office as an Under-Secretary of State, he had, on coming of age, inherited an ample income from his aunt, old Lady Lindley-Bruce. In addition to his brilliant University career, he had distinguished himself by travelling in the Near East, more especially in Albania and the disturbed districts of Macedonia, and writing the most thorough and comprehensive account ever published of the tangle of politics concerning those distressful countries.

In Parliament a Cabinet Minister had quoted the young man’s words and declared them to be a solemn warning to England, hence the Press had taken up the book, and in a week Gordon Cunningham found himself famous.

From that moment he had never remained idle, and had steadily progressed. He was constantly travelling, constantly writing, and constantly being interviewed. At the last General Election he had stood successfully for the Kingsbridge Division of Devonshire, and in the House had given a maiden speech upon the Turkish maladministration in Macedonia which had been listened to with great interest and had been the subject of a leader in the Times next day.

Both parties had declared Gordon Cunningham to be a very brilliant young man whose political career was assured. At Kingsbridge he had, by dint of sheer hard work and constant speaking, turned a minority into a big majority, and had received the hearty congratulations of the Prime Minister himself.

He had followed in his father’s footsteps, for Gilbert Cunningham had distinguished himself in the House, and afterwards at the Foreign Office. Like father, like son, was vividly illustrated in his case, for as he sat there idling at Boodle’s, his face was almost the exact replica of the picture of his dead father which hung in the long gallery at Cunning ham Court overlooking Dartmoor.

The short winter’s day was fading. Outside, in the street, passers-by hurried along beneath streaming umbrellas, and already the gas-lamps were being lit everywhere. Yet the young man still sat, his eyes fixed before him moodily, taking no notice of the group of men who were gossiping by the fire on the other side of the great, old-fashioned room; taking no notice either of the fact that a shabby, ill-dressed old Roman Catholic priest had taken shelter from the rain in a doorway opposite.

He had just returned from the funeral of Sir George Ravenscourt, which had taken place in the village churchyard at Pyrton, at the foot of the Chiltern Hills, where the Baronet had a pretty week-end house on the hill above Cuxham.

It had been a very solemn and depressing ceremony. A special train had been run from Paddington to Watlington, the nearest station, and by it a large assembly of the dead man’s personal and political friends had travelled, among them many whose names were as household words.

No ladies had been present, and the ceremony in the old village church had been as brief and quiet as possible. The whole neighbourhood was in mourning, and the church had been filled by the country-folk in their Sunday black, for Sir George was greatly respected and esteemed in the district.

Lady Ravenscourt and Maidee had remained in London, plunged in grief, and the wet, dismal day seemed to add gloom to the tragic circumstance.

Before the arrival of the special train at Watlington several persons, mostly connected with the funeral arrangements, had arrived by the first train from London, due at nine-eighteen, with the luggage-van full of great square boxes containing floral tributes from all parts of the country.

Among the early arrivals who were strangers in Watlington was a tall, well-dressed old gentleman with a reddish, narrow, rather bony face, clean shaven, erect, and spruce in his neat black and silk hat, with its broad mourning band.

He apparently knew his way, for on leaving the station he turned to the left along the county road leading into the town, instead of taking the right-hand road to Pyrton. The special was not due till noon, the funeral being fixed for one o’clock. Therefore the stranger, having plenty of time at his disposal, walked through the mud into Watlington and entered the old Bell Hotel.

In the coffee-room he ordered some breakfast, and as he ate his meal he chatted with the waiter, who guessed his errand by his garments.

The rain having ceased, he later on retraced his steps to the station, and as the special came in took up a position where he could watch the mourners as they passed the porter who was collecting tickets.

When all had entered the carriages which stood awaiting them, the stranger was still apparently uncertain, for hiring a closed fly, he followed them to the picturesque little church in Pyrton village, seating himself alone in a pew at the back and watching the service conducted with due solemnity by the white-haired rector.

Upon the coffin were some of the magnificent wreaths, and the quaint little Early-English church was nearly filled by mourners.

The stranger who had come down from London had a pair of keen, dark eyes which, though his head was apparently bent in prayer, searched everywhere. His hard, thin lips bore a distinctly evil expression, as now and then they moved, though no sound escaped them.

Bending forward, his elbows on the ledge before him, he buried his face in his hands, and as he did so his features slowly relaxed into a grin of satisfaction.

Apparently he had recognised among the mourners the person of whom he had been in search.

Presently, when the first portion of the service had been concluded, and the coffin was borne forth into the churchyard, he rose and slowly followed the mourners out.

“I wonder,” he murmured to himself as he passed out into the gravelled walk; “I wonder if there will be equal mourning for poor old Richard Goodrick! Hardly—for he was a nobody—and yet what would these men here think, how would they act—if only they knew the truth!”

He stepped aside to allow a Parliamentary Under-Secretary and the First Lord of the Treasury to pass by slowly together hat-in-hand towards the open grave. “Fools!” he laughed to himself as he turned away from them. “It is hard upon Sir George to condemn him as a suicide, yet the police, no doubt, believe it to be a very clever move—that by it they have allayed any suspicion held by the assassin. But they have not. Oh, dear no! The man who struck down George Ravenscourt is too clever, too evasive for them. He left nothing to chance.”

Standing aside some distance from the silent, bare-headed crowd around the open grave, the stranger seemed both watchful and exultant. His presence there seemed to indicate that he desired to witness the actual burial, rather than mourn the loss of the noteworthy politician.

His appearance was entirely different from when he had sat in the coroner’s court and heard the fictitious story of old Mr. Goodrick’s death, yet he was the same—the man John Ambrose.

During the ceremony of lowering the coffin and the casting of earth upon it, he edged his way close to Gordon Cunningham, who stood, silk hat in hand, beside Edward Ravenscourt, British Consul at Malmö, the late Baronet’s brother, who had succeeded to the title. The old man contrived to look long and intently into Gordon’s face, as though photographing every line of its contour upon his memory.

His keen eyes had narrowed, and the exultant, sinister expression had given way to a look of distinct malice.

Then, suddenly, as the young man stepped back before turning to leave the graveside, he swung round upon his heel, the wind blowing his scanty grey hair, and with an imprecation muttered to himself:

“Fancy you, Gordon Cunningham, mourning that man’s death—you of all men! For years—ah! till the day of your death, my fine young fellow, you will be haunted by memories of this dismal, depressing scene! You who are hailed as a remarkable young man of unusual talent—a man bound to make his mark in the world, they say. Well—you will leave it upon the annals of crime—or my name is not John Ambrose!”

He halted, pretending to read a half-effaced epitaph, until the young man, walking slowly beside a well-known member of the Opposition, had passed him by.

Then he followed leisurely, dogging Cunningham’s footsteps with pertinacious resolution, though the young man was all unconscious of the attraction he possessed for the stranger.

“That man just laid to his long rest was my enemy, just as he was my friend,” he went on, muttering to himself. “He was always indiscreet—his only failing. Had he lived his indiscretion would have cost me my secret—aye, perhaps my life. Yet probably, even now, he has been sufficiently indiscreet to betray me. Ah! If I only knew—if that fool Burgess would only speak and tell Maidee the truth!”

He saw Gordon speaking slowly and earnestly with his companion, emphasising each word with his clenched hand.

“Ah! yes!” he said, his sharp, penetrating gaze fixed upon Maidee’s lover. “You are a very fine person in your own estimation! The public acclaims you as a leader in embryo, and so exceedingly shrewd and clever are you that you believe yourself quite secure. Your presence here is sufficient evidence of your amazing unscrupulousness and daring. The police have no suspicion. You are quite assured of that. I alone know the truth—the astounding truth!”

The carriages were quickly filled, and John Ambrose, returning to the station in his fly, purposely entered the same compartment as the young member for Kingsbridge.

Only two other men, Gordon’s friends, were seated in the corners of the first-class compartment, and on the journey up to London the stranger, sitting huddled in his corner, managed to join in their conversation.

“Ah!” he exclaimed presently, “the police have made a great error in believing our poor friend Sir George’s death was self-sought.”

“Why?” asked Cunningham quickly, a trifle pale. “What leads you to believe otherwise, sir?” The stranger bore a noticeable likeness to one of his friends—and yet it was only a likeness.

“Well, I happen to be a very old and intimate friend of the man we have just buried,” Ambrose replied, fixing the young man with those remarkable eyes of his. “And I know him to be one who would never take drugs. Had he been in any trouble, he would have faced the music like a man. George Ravenscourt was never a coward—never a drug-slave.”

“Even the bravest of men have ended their lives in order to conceal some family skeleton,” remarked one of his fellow travellers, a fat man of forty-five.

“I admit that, sir,” replied Ambrose; “but George Ravenscourt, though he held a secret, was the victim of foul play. Of that I, as one of his oldest and most intimate friends, am convinced,” he said, never taking his gaze for an instant off Gordon Cunningham.

“What circumstance has convinced you?” asked the fat man with curiosity.

“Circumstances within my own knowledge,” exclaimed the old gentleman quietly, yet firmly, his calm, intense gaze still full upon the face of Maidee’s lover. “George Ravenscourt was murdered—cruelly murdered by one who vainly endeavoured to learn his secret.”

“Murdered!” cried the other man, also the dead man’s friend. “Do you know this positively?”

“Yes,” replied Ambrose in that same hard, earnest tone. “I know it positively. He was wilfully poisoned, I tell you!”

He watched the young man seated silent in the corner grow pale as death, for he had uttered that home-thrust in order to observe the effect it had upon him.

His two companions noticed Cunningham’s silence and pallor, but in their ignorance put it down to fatigue. They were inclined to disagree with the stranger’s declaration.

Yet it was upon that direct allegation uttered by the well-dressed old man that Gordon Cunningham, two hours later, sat in Boodle’s, brooding and wondering.

Who could the old fellow be? he asked himself.

What did he know? Was he in possession of the truth?

CHAPTER IX.

SOME CONFIDENCES

FOR fully a quarter of an hour Gordon Cunningham had sat immovable, heedless of the fact that he was peering out into the darkness, and that the grave-faced waiter had not lowered the blind because he sat facing the night.

Out in the rain and darkness the old priest stood motionless.

“Hulloa, Gordon! Good heavens! Why, what’s up? You look uncommonly glum, old chap!” cried a voice suddenly causing him to start and turn.

It was Price-Williams, a barrister well known at the Old Bailey for his able prosecutions on behalf of the Treasury. “This weather is certainly enough to make anyone glum,” the smooth, round-faced lawyer went on. “I’m off to Monte to-morrow for a fortnight. Why don’t you come with me? It would buck you up for the spring.”

“Can’t, old chap—the House.”

“Why don’t you pair? These past two days I’ve noticed you looking absolutely wretched. You politicians are always so full of the nation’s worries.”

“In my case it’s generally the worries of other nations,” Cunningham laughed faintly as he stretched out his legs.

“I suppose it is. But you’ve got a special knowledge of your friends the Turks. By the way,” added the lawyer, “I presume by your clothes you’ve been down to poor Ravenscourt’s funeral—eh?”

The young man nodded an affirmative.

“Sad affair—very sad,” remarked the other. “A queer bit of business altogether, that’s my opinion.”

“What do you mean?” asked the young man in a low, rather strained voice.

“Well, the fact is, I’m hardly convinced that it was suicide, notwithstanding the verdict of the coroner’s jury.”

“Why not?” inquired the other.

“Intuition, perhaps. I believe there was foul play.”

“But surely, there’s no getting away from the verdict at the inquest!”

“Not at present. But tell me, what does Miss Lambton say? Her opinion would be of interest.”

“Nothing. I’ve scarcely seen her since the sad affair. And the subject was, of course, far too painful for discussion.”

“Well, my dear fellow,” remarked the barrister, “you’ll find later that I’m not alone in my suspicions that Sir George was deliberately done to death. The police may have secured that verdict for their own purposes, you know.”

“What?” cried the young man, almost gasping. “Is that sometimes done?”

“Of course—in order to mislead. It was done in the Hammond case at Hornsey about a year ago, and again, more recently, in the affair of Ethel Burns down at Croydon. I afterwards appeared for the prosecution.”

“Then you think that—well that——”

“That he was murdered. There’s no doubt in my mind. Sir George wasn’t the man to take his own life—especially at such a moment when his party was so sore in need of him. My own opinion is that the police will discover something—that there will be a sensational development ere long. As Counsel for the Treasury, I happen to know some of their methods.”

“Do they suspect anyone?” asked Gordon eagerly.

“Ah! That I can’t tell you, my dear fellow. But depend upon it, Ravenscourt never died by his own hand.”

“Don’t let’s discuss it,” exclaimed the young man as he rose abruptly, and a few moments later he put on his hat and coat and took a taxi down to the House. Then, and only then, did the shabby priest move from the dark doorway in St. James’s Street.

Gordon had to meet a deputation of his constituents from Kingsbridge, and was engaged with them until the dinner hour. Then, after a hasty meal, he took part in an important division, and later on drove over to Carlton House Terrace, where Burgess admitted him to the house of mourning.

The widow was keeping her room, but very soon Maidee, dainty in her sombre black gown, entered the big blue-and-white drawing-room on the first floor and raised her sweet face to receive her lover’s fond caress.

“I’m awfully sorry I had to rush away yesterday, darling,” the young man exclaimed; “but I was due to speak at Highgate on the Macedonian Question and the Roumanian interference.”

“Yes. I saw the account of your splendid speech in the Times this morning. It read most excellently,” she said with enthusiasm.

“I’m so glad you liked it,” he went on, still holding her in his arms. “The public and Parliament are, alas! very ignorant of the actual causes of the internal strife in the Balkans.”

“The Times, in a leader the other day, said that nobody, not even Gladstone, had ever obtained such a mastery over the intricate complications of the Near Eastern Question as you, Gordon,” the girl remarked.

“Mere flattery, dearest—just because I happen, I suppose, to be a man of the moment. But the man which the papers praise to-day will be condemned by them in six months’ time. The public are so very fickle. The Press nowadays, unfortunately, does not lead public opinion; it finds it more advantageous to follow it. Ah! if the public would only realise how men’s reputations are manufactured by photographs being sown broadcast in the daily pictorial Press, and how many men, struggling for notoriety, keep a Press agent specially to ‘boom’ them! To-day one’s reputation is all a matter of self-advertisement. Why, you can pay a fee to a certain telegraphic agency and, wherever you may be, in any city in the world, your doings will be chronicled throughout Europe almost as though you were a crowned head. Is it therefore any wonder that the public are unable to discriminate or value a man at his actual worth?”

“Poor uncle often said the very same thing, Gordon,” the girl exclaimed, her soft, white hand upon his arm as she looked up lovingly into his countenance. “But you, at least, are not one of those who have obtained a fictitious reputation.”

“Ah!” he said with a slight sigh. “Perhaps I have, Maidee. Perhaps, after all, I am not worth all the praise bestowed upon me.”

She gazed at him full of admiration, for she was devoted to him.

“You are, dear—why, you know you are!” she cried. “Why, you are one of the most popular men in London to-day, and my uncle said many times that some time you will be given a seat in the Cabinet.”

Gordon Cunningham slowly shook his head. “No, Maidee,” he said quietly. “But what shall we do now we’ve lost Sir George? There is no one to take his place.”

“Except you.”

“Me!” he echoed with a dry laugh. “Whoever has suggested such a thing?”

“I’ve heard a whisper of it to-day,” the girl replied, her dark eyes fixed upon her lover’s pale, serious face. They were perfectly happy in each other’s love.

“Never!” he said quickly. “I would rather resign—rather withdraw from politics altogether than take your uncle’s place.”

“Why?”

But he only pressed his pale lips together and turned away his face in order to hide its expression.

A silence fell between the young people in that big, well-lit, richly decorated room, the scene of so many brilliant political gatherings—a silence broken only by the low honk of a taxicab speeding along the Mall.

Gordon Cunningham gazed around. The delicate pale blue carpet, the gilt furniture, the dead white walls, the fine oval portraits of seventeenth-century beauties by Lely and other masters, and the old-fashioned china cabinets all brought back to him memories of smart gatherings held there when he had been lionised by the great ones of England.

But all that was now of the past. That day the quiet, good-natured master of the house had been laid to his last rest, and that room would no longer be one of the centres of political life in London.

Maidee, a frail little figure, looked up into her lover’s eyes, and reading his thoughts, sighed in silence.

He asked her how her ladyship was bearing the blow, while she, in return, inquired for details of the funeral down in Oxfordshire.

“Quite a number of people went down, including three Cabinet Ministers as well as the Leader of the Opposition and deputations from Sir George’s constituency and several public bodies. The day was the most dismal I have ever spent, Maidee.”

“Yes, I fully expected it would be,” she sighed. “It has been very wretched here, too. Telegrams have been arriving all day. The King sent a message of condolence to auntie yesterday.”

He released her and walked slowly across to the big fireplace. He seemed unusually pensive, and she thought she detected a look upon his face such as she had never hitherto seen there.

It had been on the tip of her tongue on both the brief occasions when they had seen each other since the tragic affair, to tell him the truth that her uncle had been assassinated after writing that strange record. On the first occasion she was plunged in grief, and on the second she had recollected the strict injunctions of the friend of her youth, old Mr. Ambrose.

And now again the queer old fellow’s words recurred to her as she crossed to a cosy arm-chair and sank into it wearily. Her beautiful face, usually so cheerful, wore an expression of profound and touching dejection. She raised her eyes to the man standing before her with mingled love and melancholy.

He seemed agitated, while upon his pale countenance was a look of intense anxiety as, suddenly, he asked:

“Tell me, Maidee, after the discovery downstairs in the library, were the police busy making inquiries? I mean did they appear suspicious that it was not a case of suicide?”

“Why?” she asked, opening her eyes widely. “Why do you ask such a question, Gordon?”

Again those injunctions of the strange old man who was her intimate friend flashed across her mind. He had told her most distinctly that her lover must know nothing save what appeared in the papers. She was now glad that she had told him nothing when he had called early in the morning after the tragedy.

“Well,” he said after some hesitation, “it has occurred to a good many people—men I’ve met at the clubs—that Sir George was not a man to end his own life. There were, it seems, strong motives that he should still live. Besides, no financial difficulties have been revealed, have they?”

“None. In the safe in the library the police found a huge bundle of bank-notes. I saw them counted. There were fifty thousand pounds.”

“Then he certainly was not in any pecuniary trouble,” Cunningham remarked. “There seems no reason whatever for him to have taken his life.”

“But the coroner’s jury, after hearing the evidence, decided that it was an unfortunate case of suicide.”

“Yes,” he said; “I should have attended the inquest, only, as you know, I had to speak in Glasgow that evening.”

“But who has put these suspicions into your head, Gordon?” the girl asked with a fixed and serious look. Although young, beautiful, and beloved, melancholy was now the characteristic of her features. An ardent soul dwelt within her, but the tragic and gloomy atmosphere of that house had made its mark of deep depression.

“A stranger, first—an old man whom I met in the train this afternoon. He declared himself most positive that Sir George was murdered.”

“An old man!” echoed Maidee. “What could he know? Describe him.”

But by the description the girl did not recognise the stranger. Then Gordon added:

“He was extremely well dressed, and evidently an intimate friend of your uncle’s. He wore in his old-fashioned black cravat a curious cameo scarf-pin—a genuine antique gem without a doubt—two girls in classic flowing drapery before a pagan altar.”

Maidee held her breath, her eyes fixed upon the man she loved so dearly.

She recognised in an instant that the scarf-pin was the same she had seen so often worn by Uncle John!

But she cleverly kept her own counsel, and expressed a blank surprise that a mere stranger should be so positive in his assurance that Sir George had fallen beneath the hand of an assassin.

“Who could have struck him down?” she asked. “My dear uncle never harmed anybody. What could possibly have been the motive for such a crime as the one this stranger suggested?”

Her lover made no response. He—hailed as the man of to-morrow—was standing pale and motionless, staring straight before him, rigid as a statue.

CHAPTER X.

RICHARD GOODRICK’S SECRET

THAT evening, about the same hour, a rather florid-looking and somewhat over-dressed, elderly man, wearing round-rimmed, gold spectacles, and speaking with a strong American accent, paused at the steps of the house in Charlwood Street. With an effort he composed himself, then ascended the steps and rang the bell.

He wore a soft, grey felt hat, and a fancy vest showed beneath his well-cut black overcoat, while upon his hands were a pair of new dog-skin gloves.

“Say, madam, your name’s Ayres, isn’t it?” he inquired of the woman who answered the ring.

“Yes, sir,” responded the affable landlady inquiringly. “That’s me.”

“And I guess this is the house where a certain Mr. Goodrick, a rather eccentric old gentleman, died the other day—eh?”

The woman replied in the affirmative. Then, in response to another question, the stranger learnt that the body was now lying at the mortuary, and was to be interred at Kensal Green Cemetery the following day.

“Well,” said the American, “my name’s Silas H. Stilwell, of Kansas City. I’ve heard that the old gentleman was a collector of antiques, and, as I’m a collector also, I wondered if you’d mind me having a sight of them—for a consideration, of course,” and, with an ingratiating smile, he pressed a couple of sovereigns into the good woman’s ready hand, adding: “We Americans are always interested in old English curios, you know. We have none of our own. Pardon me coming at this hour, but I’m full up right along, and I sail from Liverpool next Saturday. Been over in Europe two months, you know, and I’ve done Parrus, Ber-line, and Rome, and am just doing London before crossing to the other side. Say, Mrs. Ayres, this is a real grand old city of yours!”

“Yes, sir, I suppose it is,” laughed the landlady, inviting him into the narrow hall. “But we cockneys don’t think so much of it.”

“Just as we don’t reckon much of New York,” said Mr. Stilwell.

“But, you know, sir, I’ve ’ad strick orders from the police not to let anyone see old Mr. Goodrick’s odds and ends. You may be a reporter!”

“Oh! I’m not a Press man,” laughed the American. “You needn’t fear me interviewing you, or anything of that sort. I merely want to have a look round to see what the old man collected. Perhaps some of his things’ll go to the hammer, and I’d like to see them before I go back home, as I could then leave a commission with someone to buy for me.”

“Yes, sir; I expect they’ll be sold. Mr. Medland—that’s the detective-inspector—told me they’re worth a lot o’ money, for it seems that our lodger was an expert in old things. All I knows is that ’e spent money over ’is ’obby when ’e could very ill afford it. ’E’d often go without ’is lunch, and buy some old cracked cup or some bit of old iron with the money.”

“Guess he was a true collector, Mrs. Ayres,” laughed the red-faced man. “To us who know a good piece of pottery when we see it, a really unique specimen is always irresistible. But, according to the papers, he committed suicide. Spent all his money upon his mania for collecting, like so many other educated men have done before him.”

Mrs. Ayres did not contradict him, remembering that she had been instructed by Inspector Medland to keep her own counsel.

The couple of sovereigns would, she was arguing, be honestly earned by showing the American the dead man’s collection, even though the police had forbidden her to allow anyone there. She saw that he was not a reporter, so she slipped the two coins into her apron pocket and requested the caller to follow her, ushering him into the stuffy little back-parlour, and turning up the gas.

The place was even in worse confusion than it had been when Richard Goodrick lived.

“The police have turned everything topsy-turvy,” remarked the woman.

“So I see,” exclaimed the American. “And they’ve broken one or two priceless specimens in their eager haste. Look at that beautiful Spode pastille-burner—quite unique—with the cover smashed.” And he took it from the floor and examined it. “Broken quite recently. It’s a shame—a very great shame.”

“I confess, sir, that I don’t know anything about these old things. Myself, I wouldn’t give ’em ’ouse room,” declared the woman.

“Guess you’d like the money they’ll fetch in a sale-room, Mrs. Ayres!” remarked the American laconically. “Why,” he declared, gazing admiringly around, “there are some things here worth a small fortune,” and, taking up a tiny porcelain bust, he added: “Ah! why here’s a Fulham portrait of ‘Prince Rupert.’ The only other known is in the British Museum!”

“I wouldn’t give such an ugly thing ’ouse room!” repeated Mrs. Ayres.

“My dear madam,” exclaimed her visitor quietly, “if you were a connoisseur you would recognise that this was one of Dwight’s, made about 1680, and his work was undoubtedly the finest and most original production of any English potter. And look!” he cried in admiration. “Say! look at that exquisite slip-ware posset-cup of about the same date. You see the rich yellow tint. That was due to the galena, or lead glaze.”

“Oh, sir, I suppose all the old things is very interestin’, but I must say I like new things I buy at the shop,” exclaimed the woman. “Poor old Mr. Goodrick was always a-talkin’ some of his gibberish about tygs—whatever they were—salt glaze, Delft, Liverpool, and Astbury.”

“Yes. Of those I see some very remarkable specimens, and some beautiful pieces of lustre, too.”

“Well, I’ve got to see after my ’usband’s supper, or there’ll be trouble when ’e comes ’ome,” exclaimed the landlady. “I’ll leave you to have a look round yourself, sir.”

“You’re very trustful of me,” laughed the American. “You read honesty in my face—eh? Wal, you should never trust a collector,” he continued reproachfully.

“Oh, I trust you, sir,” replied the woman, her broad, ruddy face beaming as she turned and disappeared into the kitchen.

The stranger listened intently until she had closed the door, whereupon his manner instantly altered.

“What a dastardly shame to have broken that beautiful silver-mounted bellarmine!” he exclaimed, taking up a large fragment of a narrow-necked bottle which bore upon its neck the crude representation of the squat, bearded face of Cardinal Bellarmine, who was so determined a persecutor of the Protestants in 1615. “I expect the police suspected something secreted there.”

Bending, he eagerly turned over a heap of tarnished antique silver and old brass, big leather-bound black-letter books, and a quantity of other odds and ends.

“The old gossip doesn’t suspect me, that’s very evident,” he laughed to himself. “I’ve given off some of the same jargon used by the dead man, and I suppose I’ve impressed her that I possess a special knowledge of old-English pottery. She evidently doesn’t know a Toby jug from a slip-ware cruisken.”

Standing before the fireplace, he gazed around upon the disordered room. Upon the threadbare carpet he saw a dark brown stain—the mark of the life-blood of Richard Goodrick, the man who had formed that miscellaneous collection. It caused him to halt and shudder.

“How strange!” he exclaimed aloud to himself, drawing his hand across his brow. “How very strange it all is! Yes,” and he bent as though to recover something from beneath the table; “Goodrick was in this position, reading something, when his assailant crept up behind and killed him. Yes, I see now exactly.”

Then, detecting a sound, he instantly straightened himself and listened intently.

“I must be quick,” he added to himself in a low, hoarse whisper, “or that woman will return, and my chance may slip by. It is fortunate that she does not suspect. That couple of sovereigns put into her hand was indeed money very well spent.”

Then, rousing himself, he recommenced his eager investigation of the piles of curios heaped just as the police had heedlessly cast them.

With some difficulty he removed a quantity of rusty armour, swords, and helmets from a big, carved dowry-chest, and, lifting the heavy lid, revealed a quantity of parchment books within—volumes which emitted a strong musty odour. In frantic haste he turned them over, but the object which he sought was not there. And he then closed the long, heavy lid with a sigh of disappointment.

“Surely they can’t have found it already!” he gasped in deep anxiety, his accent being no longer that of the American.

He seemed nervous and apprehensive; his hands trembled in his feverish haste.

In his eagerness he turned over pictures, rolls of moth-eaten tapestry, little cases of rare coins, matrices of ancient bronze seals, and other things, until, at last, with a low cry of delight, he came across the centre column of the old Sheffield plate candelabrum of the days of Queen Anne.

It lay concealed beneath an ancient carved Bible-box, and with eager hands he drew it forth, half fearing, it seemed, that his search might, after all, have been in vain. Quickly he took the column in both hands, and, wrenching it, unscrewed the base, and peered breathlessly within.

“Excellent!” he cried in quick exultation. “It’s there. They haven’t seized it after all!”

And, carefully taking out the small roll of neatly-written manuscript, he hastily thrust it into the breast-pocket of his coat, while just at the same moment the shuffling footsteps of the garrulous landlady were heard out in the hall.

Next second she entered the room, ere he could re-screw the two pieces of old plate together.

“Wal,” he exclaimed, reassuming the drawl, with a short laugh, “have you done your cooking, Mrs. Ayres?”

“Almost, sir,” she replied. “I hope you’ve been interested in the old rubbish. I wish they’d clear it all away. I want to ’ave the room re-papered and whitewashed. As it is, it reminds me too much of the poor old gentleman—especially with that horrible stain on the carpet.”

“Who do you expect will clear it away?” asked her visitor, screwing the candlestick together, and replacing it upon the heap with well-feigned unconcern.

“The police will, I hope. The old man ’asn’t any relatives—as far as I know. So I suppose they’ll sell the things, and the proceeds’ll go to the Government. That’s what my ’usband says.”

“Well, when they are put up for sale, I shall be a buyer of some of them, I can assure you, Mrs. Ayres,” declared the American. “We never get such a splendid lot as this for sale on our side. I shall go to a man I know to-morrow, and commission him to buy for me. They are certain to be dispersed at Christie’s.”

“Well, sir, as you know all about such things, how much do you think this lot is worth?”

“Ah, I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” laughed Mr. Stilwell. “But, as an instance, you see that little Madonna on the wall? The one on panel—of the early Florentine school. It’s a very good picture, is that. I’d give in dollars for it an equivalent in your English money up to five hundred pounds, and think it dirt cheap. It will fetch double at Christie’s.”

“Five hundred pounds!” gasped the woman, staring at him. “What, for that one dark old picture with the chipped frame!”

“Yes. And I can tell you, Mrs. Ayres, that you have in this room certain objects worth several thousands—things which will be bought eagerly by your British or South Kensington Museums. Of course, I see that your late lodger was an undoubted expert. He evidently purchased what was unique. He knew well what he was about.”

“ ’E was a crank, I tell you,” declared the woman. “He was very tryin’ sometimes, with ’is snarling ways and ’is snappy speeches—but I’m very sorry ’e’s gone, poor old gentleman. What a sad end!”

“Yes,” sighed the American; “a very sad end indeed. I only wish I had had the pleasure of knowing him. With such a knowledge as he betrays by his collection, he must have been a most intensely interesting person.”

“Lor, sir, ’e could talk on any subjec’ you liked. My ’usband used to say as ’ow ’e knew more about politics than even the newspapers did. ’E ’ad a most wonderful memory for people an’ dates an’ speeches an’ the like. ’E’d often, when talking with my ’usband, quote speeches wot were made in Parliament twenty years ago. In fact, sir, old Nosey Goodrick, as they called ’im, was a walkin’ wonder. ’E only ’ad one real friend. ’E was an Italian priest, a shabby, snappy old man.”

“How strange, with all this fine collection, which he could have turned into money at any hour, he chose to put an end to himself when he found his purse empty,” the man remarked. “By the way,” he added, “did you see much of this priest?”

But the woman remained silent. She recollected those strict injunctions of Medland’s to say nothing whatever concerning the actual truth. She knew that Don Mario could not be found. The public were to remain in complete ignorance concerning her lodger’s mysterious end.

“My ’usband ought to be ’ome by now. ’E’s a-workin’ late in the City. It’s just their busiest time at the warehouse now,” remarked Mrs. Ayres, turning the conversation.

“I’d much like to see him, but I fear I must be getting along. I’ve a lot to do before I sail, so I’ll wish you good-evening,” her visitor said in haste. “Be careful that nobody takes away any of these things, for there’s not one object, not even one of those rusty old daggers, which is not worth a good sum.”

“I’ll be careful, sir, never fear, now that I know they’re so valuable,” she assured him.

“I wonder if you could get me a match,” he said, suddenly feeling in his pockets.

“With pleasure, sir,” answered the woman, at once hurrying to the kitchen.

The instant she had gone the American listened, and then bent to the floor near the fireplace, and with a quick movement tore up the corner of the old carpet, whence, from beneath a piece of tattered linoleum over which it had been tacked, he drew a long, faded, blue envelope containing some papers.

In breathless haste he took them out, glanced at them to make certain that they were what he sought, and, just as the woman was re-entering the room, thrust them hurriedly into his pocket.

Two minutes later, as he was hastening along Denbigh Street in the direction of Victoria Station, he laughed to himself and breathed more freely.

“Good!” exclaimed old Mr. Ambrose aloud, for, as the reader has no doubt surmised, the inquisitive American was none other than he, the mysterious man of marvellous evasiveness, of clever subterfuge, and sinister actions. “The fool of a woman suspects nothing! I need have had no fear—she never does. How fortunate that I recollected the envelope beneath the carpet! Had the police discovered it, everything would have been revealed. But I am quite safe—absolutely safe, now that they will not find Don Mario, and the secret of Richard Goodrick is mine—and mine alone!”

CHAPTER XI.

CONCERNS LOVE AND A MYSTERY

THE sensation caused by the suicide of Sir George Ravenscourt had already died down. Events pass quickly nowadays in London.

His executors had discovered that her ladyship and Miss Irene had been left well provided for, and that pecuniary worry could not have been held responsible for the fatal act.

Moreover, there was much mystery attaching to a sum of fifty thousand pounds in notes found in his safe in the wall of the library. Inquiries revealed that this sum had, a few days before, been placed to his credit at his bank by a person who could not be traced, but whose name was Sutherland. The money was in the shape of a draft upon the Banque de Paris et Pays Bas, of Amsterdam, and two days later Sir George had withdrawn it personally in notes.

None of his accounts showed whence it had been derived, and his solicitors, as well as the two executors, both business men, were greatly mystified.

Lady Ravenscourt and Maidee had removed to the house of the former’s sister, Mrs. Beresford, in Gloucester Terrace, Hyde Park, while the house in Carlton House Terrace had been closed, and the faithful Burgess left in charge.

Maidee and Gordon met daily. London society was interested in their engagement. He usually called to see her each morning, for after noon he was compelled to be down at the House, where the sittings were just then usually late, and it was not until the early hours that, tired out, he was able to get back to his rooms in Bruton Street.

Mourning had compelled Maidee to cancel all her engagements—and they were many, for she was much sought after by the younger hostesses—while it also prevented her going to the theatre or out to supper. Indeed, the tragic affair had completely cut off the sudden round of gaiety which had followed her presentation, and time now hung heavily upon her hands amid gloomy surroundings.

She was, however, a great reader, and, finding herself debarred from dancing and pleasure-seeking, she turned to books as a solace, and read the solid works of Schopenhauer, Hebbel, Lessing and Hegel, volumes at the very sight of which Gordon shuddered.

With great care, and without exhibiting any undue anxiety, young Cunningham had endeavoured to learn from Scotland Yard what action was being taken regarding Sir George’s death. As a Member of Parliament, he had facilities for making inquiry; yet, though in a veiled manner he threatened to put a question in the House, all the information he could gather was that, in face of the coroner’s verdict, it was not any further a police matter.

By this response he became distinctly unnerved. His object had been to discover in what direction the inquiries of the police, if any, were being pushed. There was a suspicion abroad—a distinct suspicion he had heard expressed in the clubs, over dinner-tables, and in the drawing-rooms of London—that Sir George had not died by his own hand. And if such suspicions were general, then no doubt Scotland Yard would hear of it and investigate.

He kept his apprehensions to himself, but his friends, and Maidee more especially, noted how pale, worn-out, and anxious he had become, and how each day increased the serious expression upon his usually open, merry countenance.

One morning when he called at Gloucester Terrace, and they were standing before the drawing-room fire clasped in each other’s arms, she suddenly asked anxiously:

“What’s the matter, dear? Is anything troubling you—anything on your mind?”

“On my mind!” he echoed, with a start. “Why no, darling. What should there be?”

“Oh! I don’t know, Gordon, but of late you’ve seemed so preoccupied, so silent, so very thoughtful,” replied the girl. “The whole world seems to have suddenly become gloomy and overshadowed since poor uncle’s death.”

“Well, I really didn’t know I looked unusually sad,” laughed the young man, rousing himself with an effort. “Perhaps it is on account of working hard over my new book upon Albanian independence. I want to get it out in the spring, and therefore have to write each morning after I return from the House.”

“You ought not to work so hard, dear,” she declared, looking up into his face. “I’m sure you will injure your health. Uncle often said you were burning the candle at both ends.”

But Gordon only laughed.

“I really don’t feel it,” he declared. “I can never be idle. My only regret is that my duties at the House prevent me from travelling.”

“And leaving me!” she cried in reproach, gazing into his pale face with a look of fond affection which was unmistakable.

“No, not that,” he hastened to assure her with tenderness. “My intention is, after our marriage, that you shall come out with me to the East. You would be delighted with the quaint life in Albania and Macedonia.”

“I’d very much love it all, except those horrible massacres for which your friends the Turks are responsible.”

“Ah! not always,” he exclaimed reprovingly. “You must not misjudge the Mussulman. Come with me and see for yourself, then your prejudice against the Turk will be swept away, I feel assured. Once I was just as prejudiced as you are—until I saw the truth with my own eyes.”

“Well, I do wish you’d take my advice, dear, and have a rest,” exclaimed the girl earnestly. “Put your book aside. It will do as well if published in the autumn as in the spring. Your reputation will not suffer by its delay.”

“Ah! but the very question with which I am dealing will come before the House next month, and I must have it out as soon as possible,” answered her lover, gazing upon her in admiration.

“Then, why don’t you pair, and go for a rest—on the Riviera or somewhere?”

“Oh, I’m sick of Nice and Monte, and the tea-table tabbies of Cannes. I’ve been there three seasons in succession.”

“Then go to Algeria or Tunis—or else to Assouan,” she suggested.

“Ah! you want to get rid of me,” he declared, laughing. “No; I shall remain in London. I can’t leave the House just now—quite impossible,” he said with decision.

But he did not allow her to guess that the reason he would not take a holiday was because his ambition prompted him to remain with a view to securing high office. Truth to tell, the constant lionising to which he had of late been subjected had turned his head a little. Hitherto he had been modest and unspoiled by success, but he had now suddenly become seized by an overweening ambition. He held himself in the highest esteem, and hailed himself as the coming man whom everyone predicted.

Clever enough not to betray to Maidee the extent of his own ambition, he knew that if he did so he must fall in her estimation. The blindness and ignorance of most women make them the victims of fancied perfections. Love, in the common acceptation of the term, is a folly. Love, in its purity, its loftiness, its unselfishness, as was Maidee’s affection, is not only a consequence, but a proof of moral excellence—the sensibility of moral beauty, the forgetfulness of self in the admiration engendered by it. Such love proves its claim to a high moral influence—the triumph of the unselfish over the selfish in a young girl’s nature.

She was sorely puzzled by her lover’s apparent apprehensiveness. He seemed pale, nervous, and expectant—quite unlike his usual self. In conversation he often remained silent, apathetic, thoughtful. What, she wondered, could be the reason?

No man in the fevered political world of London led a more strenuous life, she was well aware. He was constant in his attendance at divisions, he went everywhere, and was highly popular in the smartest set. As an orator he addressed great meetings in various parts of the country, and was already one of the best speakers his party possessed.

But many shook their heads. There was an unhealthy look about his face. Some whispered that he took opiates to soothe his overwrought brain, while others hinted at speculation and serious financial trouble in consequence.

As he bent and kissed his well-beloved good-bye, for it was already past noon, she felt somehow that his caress was not so warm or so passionate as it used to be. But she made no remark—she only wondered.

Crossing to a big bowl of sweet-smelling lilies of the valley upon a side-table, she picked him several, deftly made them into a buttonhole, tied them with cotton and placed them in the lappel of his black morning-coat, saying:

“There! Wear them to-day and think sometimes of me!”

“I always think of you, Maidee,” he declared with truth. “Always—always!” And, again kissing her fondly upon the lips, he added: “Never an hour passes but my thoughts turn to you, my well-beloved.”

The girl held in his embrace sighed slightly. She was very happy—and yet that curious anxiety of Gordon’s puzzled her.

He bade her adieu, holding her a long time close to his breast, crushing the lilies slightly. Then he kissed her once more, and, turning, left the warm, flower-scented room.

As, ten minutes later, he was seated in a taxi driving down Park Lane, staring straight before him, his pale, fevered lips moved, but at first no sound escaped them.

At last, however, he suddenly held his breath, and exclaimed aloud:

“Maidee—ah! my own Maidee—my darling—my own well-beloved! What would you think of me if you knew the bitter truth! But you must never know—never—never! I would rather kill myself first!”

Then he sat silent, his face white and haggard, his gloved hand clenched.

At Boodle’s he called for his letters, and gulped down a glass of neat brandy.

As he drove along the Mall he caught sight of those drab, drawn blinds of the house in Carlton House Terrace.

He started with a cry of horror, and placed both his hands before his eyes to shut out the view.

Yet, when he alighted at the House, he walked with firm step and smiling face past the saluting constable as though his conscience were perfectly at ease and he had no trouble in the world.

He obtained his letters at the post-office in the lobby, and then went along to one of the committee-rooms, where he had an appointment, nodding to men he knew and exchanging hurried words with one of the whips, easily and merrily, his manner entirely changed from that of twenty minutes before.

Alone in Mrs. Beresford’s drawing-room in Gloucester Terrace, Maidee, sweet, pensive, and neat in her sombre black, sat moodily looking out of the window, thinking and wondering.

“There is something wrong with Gordon,” she declared to herself. “He has never been the same since the night of poor uncle’s death. How strange it was that Uncle John should urge me to tell him nothing! What does the old fellow know, I wonder? Why has he taken so great and so secret an interest in me all these years? There is a mystery—a very great mystery somewhere. Of that I feel convinced.”

CHAPTER XII.

TO FACE THE MUSIC

BY the firelight that same afternoon in the narrow, dingy sitting-room in Walworth old John Ambrose sat at ease in his shabby arm-chair. The tall, thin, sad-faced Roman Catholic priest with whom he had been chatting earnestly had just risen and left him.

Ambrose had resided there nearly two months, and, as he mused, he contemplated changing his abode.

“I’ve been here too long. Mario is right!” he croaked to himself as he warmed his hands, for outside it was bitterly cold, with a rough wind and driving sleet.

The quiet back street, the lamps of which were not yet lighted, looked inexpressibly dull and dismal.

With his white beard, his longish, silvery hair and his tall, spare figure, he presented the exact replica of the appearance of Richard Goodrick, the man now in his grave at Kensal Green. Yet only at home, at his lodgings, or wherever he met Maidee, did he assume that patriarchal appearance. He was a man of a hundred faces and as many disguises—a past-master in the art of assuming various characters and acting the parts to perfection.

A book lay open on the table—a dry-as-dust volume upon ecclesiastical architecture—while beside it were his big spectacles, and the Hitopadesa in the original Sanscrit text, which, until Don Mario had called to consult him in confidence, he had been diligently studying. From a room somewhere at the back of the house came the muffled twanging of a mandoline played by a young Italian waiter of the Hotel Cecil, who was a fellow-lodger, and had brought his instrument with him from his native Tuscany.

“In some senses I’m safe enough here,” the old man argued with himself. “Yet it would certainly be judicious to make a move. Would that I dare leave London! But I cannot. No; I must remain near Maidee. Yet is it not almost time I threw off this disguise? Someone might perchance recognise my close resemblance to old Goodrick; and, if so, then any explanation would be exceedingly awkward. Each hour that I live in the disguise of the dead man increases my peril. Yes; I will take Mario’s advice. I must end it. I shall be safer—far safer—in the guise of a gentleman.”

The twanging of the mandoline recommenced in the back room as the young man sang one of the old stornelli of the Tuscan peasantry:

La mattina pel fresco e un bel cantare,

Quando le Dame sentono l’amore;

E stanno in su quell’ uscio a ragionare:

Chi l’avera di noi quel bel garzone?

E stanno in su quell’ uscio a far consiglio:

Chi l’avera di noi quel fresco giglio?

“Ah!” sighed the old man, listening intently to the words. “How often, years ago, have I heard that sung in the maizefields and vineyards of the glorious Val d’Arno! The merry laughter of the women at work before their doors, plaiting the straws; the jangling of the convent bells; the slow tread of the white oxen at the plough—yes—they all come back to me now, those days of my bright, careless youth in the sunny land of the olive and the vine. I wonder whence the young fellow comes?” he added. “I must speak to him one day—he might be useful.”

Scarcely had the words fallen from his lips when he heard someone ascend the front-door steps and ring. Quickly he glanced out of the window, and saw, to his surprise, that it was Maidee.

In a moment he put on his heavy-rimmed spectacles, and opened the door, welcoming her warmly.

“Why, you’re in total darkness, Uncle John!” cried the girl, groping along the mantelshelf for the matches.

“Because of my eyes, my dear,” was the old man’s response. “I rest them all I can. But light the gas—of course.”

Maidee did as she was bid, while he lowered the dirty venetian blinds, and then drew a chair beside the fire for her.

Without invitation she threw off her long seal-skin coat, took off her gloves, and then sat with her neat feet upon the fender, laughing merrily at the man who, through all those years, had been her close friend and confidant.

“I didn’t expect you on such a night, child,” the old fellow said, looking straight into her face with his strangely sinister expression.

“I came because I want particularly to see you, Uncle John,” she replied seriously. “I want to ask you about Gordon.”

“About Gordon!” echoed Ambrose in surprise. “What about him?”

“Well, I feel certain there is something very wrong. Of late he is pale, agitated, nervous—quite unlike his usual self. What does it all mean? Why did you forbid me the other day to tell him anything concerning the real cause of poor uncle’s death?”

Ambrose—the man of many faces—held his breath. The girl’s question was a facer.

But, with that marvellous cunning which characterised his every utterance, he merely remarked:

“He seems nervous and pale, you say? Perhaps it is owing to overwork. He leads a very strenuous life, you must recollect.”

“No,” the girl declared, “it is more than overwork. He has some terrible anxiety upon his mind. I’ve watched him—and I’m quite certain of it.”

“Of what nature do you suspect—eh?”

“Oh, how can I tell!” she cried. “I’m terribly worried over him. He excuses himself by saying that he is hard at work upon another book. But surely that would not account for his extreme anxiety and nervousness. He starts in terror at the least sound or unusual movement.”

“Nerves unstrung—wants a change,” the old man almost snapped.

“He won’t take my advice, and go away. He is wanted in the House, he declares. But, Uncle John,” she added in a changed voice, “you’ve always been so open and straightforward with me, do tell me the reason I may not explain to him that my poor uncle did not take his own life?”

“My dear, there is a very strong reason,” he replied evasively.

“But what is it? Surely the secret need not be withheld from him!”

“Have not the police given you the strictest injunctions to preserve silence?” he asked. “You and I intend to bring the assassin to justice; therefore our very first duty is to regard the instructions of the authorities. They are utterly in the dark, it is true, while we are—or, at least, I am—in possession of certain facts. These, however, will be rendered entirely useless the instant the true cause of Sir George’s death leaks out.”

“I hardly understand,” she said. “I do not follow you.”

“My child,” he exclaimed a trifle impatiently, “as I told you the other day, act as I direct you, and leave the rest to me. You surely know me sufficiently well to be aware that I have your welfare at heart—as well as that of your lover.”

“Ah, yes,” she sighed. “You have been so very good to me, Uncle John. I know you are acting for my welfare, and with a view to avenging the death of my dear uncle. Yet, somehow, strange apprehensions have seized me—why, I cannot tell.”

“Not at all surprising!” exclaimed the old man in a thin voice. “The shock of the horrible discovery, no doubt, upset your nerves, and you now imagine all kinds of wild things.”

“But the point I want to clear up is: Who killed Sir George?”

The old man, his thin lips a trifle pale, shrugged his shoulders.

“At present,” he said in a low voice, “we cannot tell.”

“Someone entered the house with him on that fateful night—I feel certain of it,” cried the girl. “And the person who entered must have been one of his friends!”

“Perhaps so. But—well, what is the use of forming any theories without some firm basis for them, my child?” he said. “At present it is too early to discuss the affair. We have only to remain silent—to wait and to watch.”

“But are you certain of success, Uncle John?” asked the girl, looking into the old man’s shrewd eyes.

“In this world nothing is certain, my dear,” was the quiet reproof. “I can only do my utmost. So leave everything to me. By the way,” he added, as though in afterthought, “I have something to show you. I wonder if I can find it,” and, rising, he took a candle from the cupboard beside the fireplace and lit it. Then he went to the other cupboard near where she was seated, and began rummaging among some books.

Suddenly as he did so there was a flash of bright light, a sharp fizzling sound, and an odour of burnt hair filled the place.

“Ah!” shrieked the old fellow in dismay. “Look at what I’ve done!”

And Maidee, turning quickly, saw that his handsome white beard had been nearly wholly destroyed by the flare of the candle.

He looked hideously grotesque as he straightened himself and faced her.

“What a great pity!” she exclaimed. “How very unfortunate!”

“Yes,” he said, with a laugh. “I must shave it all off now, I suppose. It is, after all, very annoying. How I managed it I don’t know.”

“Why, when you have shaved it off, Uncle John, I really shan’t know you,” declared his fair visitor.

“Well, if you’ll wait a minute or two, I’ll just take it all off. I can’t go about like this, can I? Phew! What a horrid smell!”

And he opened the door and ascended to the stuffy little back bedroom on the second floor, leaving her seated before the fire to ruminate upon his refusal to satisfy her suspicions. On his way he met his landlady, showed her the evidences of his misfortune, and received her condolences. The handsome white beard in which her lodger took such pride had been utterly destroyed.

Upstairs, the cunning old fellow quickly removed its remains bodily, and, having scraped his chin over with a razor, clipped his hair short in the best manner he could—rendering it rather ragged withal—then returned to Maidee.

His changed appearance caused her to stare aghast. Then she burst out laughing.

“Well, Uncle John!” she cried, “if I had met you in the street I certainly should never have known you. The absence of beard has made you look twenty years younger. You must always remain so. You look quite smart!”

“Do I?” asked the old fellow, smiling contentedly. “Then my misfortune is beneficial, after all—eh?”

“Most beneficial. Your appearance has entirely changed, and certainly for the better. You look now just as you used to look when I was a little girl, and we used to sit together in the parks.”

“Ah! you remember, then, that I had no beard in those days!”

“Of course, I remember! How can I ever forget my dear Uncle Jack, who was almost as a father to me, even though we had to meet in secret and bribe nurses and governesses not to tell,” she laughed. “Lately I’ve often thought of your friend Don Mario. He was always so kind to me. Where is he?”

Ambrose was silent, looking at her strangely with a fond, loving expression, which showed how deeply he was attached to the child now grown to be a woman.

And she, ignorant that the sudden and complete change in his personal appearance had been purposely effected, was greatly gratified by it.

“Oh,” he replied at last, “Mario went back to Italy long ago. He was very fond of you.”

Presently the fat landlady brought in the tea-tray, with two cups, and the strange pair sat over their meal in cosy comfort, the sweet-faced girl pouring out tea daintily, and handing it to the man so suddenly rejuvenated.

“What was it that you intended to show me?” she asked suddenly.

“Oh, nothing,” he replied. “Only a rather rare little book of poems I bought the other day, which I thought you would like. I’ll find it, and give it to you when next you call,” was his careless reply, as he attacked a piece of toast.

Then, after about half an hour, Maidee put on her furs and gloves, and they both went forth to seek a taxi.

“You do look strange, Uncle John!” she declared, laughing merrily as together they turned into the busy Walworth Road. “I can’t help looking at you!”

“Well, I’m glad my appearance is not rendered more hideous,” he said, as he hailed a passing cab. And then, bidding her adieu, saw her into the vehicle, which sped away back to Gloucester Terrace.

Ambrose, on his return to his room, threw off his overcoat, and gave vent to a low laugh of triumph.

“One change has been satisfactorily effected,” he muttered to himself. “There is still another thing. Shall I do it?” he asked himself, standing by the fire and gazing thoughtfully upon the carpet. “Shall I do it? Is it really wise?”

He removed his spectacles and paced the room deep in thought, a strange, weird figure with aquiline features, roughly cut hair, and clean-shaven face.

Then, lighting his candle, he ascended to his room.

Returning presently, he ordered the tea-things to be cleared away, and, locking the door very carefully after the landlady had left, he sat down at the table, and drew from his pocket the faded blue envelope which he had secured from beneath the carpet of the dead man’s room in Pimlico.

The papers it contained—thin, flimsy papers, covered with minute writing, with two official-looking documents bearing signatures and seals—he spread before him, and slowly read them. For his age, he possessed wonderfully keen eyesight, being able to read the smallest print by gas-light.

Presently he rose, and, taking a stubby piece of pencil from the mantelpiece, he re-seated himself, and made rapid calculations upon the back of the envelope, which, from its appearance, had been carried in the pocket for a long time before being concealed.

The calculations were of money, and ran into thousands of pounds.

As he placed them on paper a grim smile crossed his thin lips and a strange expression lit up his crafty eyes.

Then, from the same pocket, he drew forth the precious piece of paper which the dead man had so cunningly concealed within the stem of the old Queen Anne candelabrum, and, unrolling it, he read it through from end to end—three times, as though in order to impress it upon his memory.

As he did so the third time he sighed, his brows slowly knit, and he appeared both puzzled and apprehensive.

“Suppose he suspected!” exclaimed the strange old man aloud in a low, half-frightened whisper. “Suppose the police—but—but no!” he laughed; “I am again merely raising a phantom in order to terrify myself. Nobody suspects—nobody can possibly know. Therefore I am safe—quite safe! Ah!” he chuckled weirdly to himself, as his thin fingers clenched into his palms. “Revenge! Yes, I shall have my revenge, after waiting all these long years—living unknown and unforgotten.”

Slowly the man of subterfuge rose to his feet, his face pale, hard drawn, with an expression upon it of hate and anger.

“Yes—yes!” he said hoarsely. “I’ll do it. Then I shall be quite safe. Nobody must learn the secret written here—nobody. I have no person in whom I can trust, upon whom I can rely—except Don Mario and Maidee, and—and, alas! she’s in love with Gordon!”

He turned to the table, and his thin, claw-like hands closed upon the precious papers which he had so cleverly contrived to secure. With his pale, thin lips pressed together, he tore the papers into pieces, and then, with an exultant cry, he cast them upon the fire.

“And so,” he chuckled to himself as he watched the sparks brighten and die from the blackened tinder, “and so the strange secret of Richard Goodrick and the mystery of his death will ever remain concealed from all the world—save myself!”

Hardly had the words fallen from his lips when there came a loud rap at the door and the sharp voice of his landlady, saying:

“There’s a gentleman here to see you, Mr. Ambrose.”

The old man started, slipped on his spectacles, unlocked the door noiselessly, and threw it open.

As he did so he found a figure upon the threshold, which, though differently dressed, he instantly recognised.

He fell back in speechless amazement.

It was the man whom he had seen giving evidence at the inquest upon the body of Richard Goodrick, the very last man he desired to face—Detective-Inspector Medland!

CHAPTER XIII.

FACE TO FACE

“MR. AMBROSE?” inquired the well-dressed detective, politely standing, silk hat in hand.

“That’s my name,” snapped the old man, recovering his marvellous self-control and looking inquiringly at his visitor.

“I’ve ventured to call, and I want to have a few words with you. I may as well introduce myself. My name is March, and I am a solicitor.”

“Yes,” replied the old man, inviting his visitor inside, but instantly upon his mettle. He eyed him from head to foot and then laughed within himself at the thinness of the detective’s disguise. “And upon what do you wish to consult me?” he asked, when his visitor had seated himself.

“Well,” said March, “I suppose I had better explain that my firm, March and Edwards, of 28 Bedford Row, are solicitors to a certain family who are interested in the estate of a person who committed suicide recently—an eccentric man named Richard Goodrick, who lived in obscurity at Charlwood Street, Pimlico. You may, perhaps, have seen an account of it in the papers?”

“No,” snapped the old man. “I never read the papers. They contain mostly lies nowadays. I can’t stand the modern journalism.”

“Mr. Goodrick was apparently a very eccentric man who had lived in the same lodgings for the past eighteen years or so, and had had only one or two visitors the whole time. When he died he left a collection of antiques, which experts have since valued roughly at twenty to twenty-five thousand pounds, and in his room a will was discovered—a very curious will——”

“A will!” gasped the old man leaning forward eagerly.

“Yes—a will which contained certain very strange revelations.”

“Concerning whom?”

“Concerning himself.”

Ambrose slowly rubbed his clean-shaven chin and pursed his lips.

“Well?” he asked.

“Well, the purpose of my visit to-day is to have a confidential chat with you,” said March, looking the wily old fellow straight in the face. “In the course of my inquiries concerning the deceased I have reason to believe that you were acquainted with him.”

“I!” cried Ambrose, opening his eyes in wonder.

The truth was this. On that morning there had been received at Scotland Yard an ill-spelt anonymous letter in what appeared to be a foreign handwriting, asserting that Mr. John Ambrose, living in Wansey Street, Walworth Road, possessed considerable knowledge of the mysterious recluse of Pimlico. It had been placed in Medland’s hands, and he had resolved to interview the person in question.

It was perhaps fortunate for Ambrose that the officer had not called there a quarter of an hour earlier. Had he done so he would have come face to face with Maidee Lambton.

Medland’s sharp, penetrating gaze was fixed upon the shrewd old fellow’s countenance, but so well did the latter express blank astonishment that he felt at once that there was perhaps nothing after all in the anonymous allegation. The public is, alas! too fond of sending bogus clues to Scotland Yard, for hardly a day passes but endeavours are made to hoax the police.

“I am told,” said the visitor, “that you were upon friendly terms with the old gentleman who led such a secluded and mysterious life.”

“What did you say the name was?” asked Ambrose.

“Goodrick—Richard Goodrick, late of 78 Charlwood Street, Pimlico.”

“Don’t know anybody of that name,” grunted the old man. “Did you say that he committed suicide?”

“Yes. He was a great collector of antiques. I believe you are an expert, too, are you not?”

“Expert!” cried the old man. “No, I’m not an expert. I know a little about old English pottery and something regarding mediæval manuscripts—but there my knowledge ends.”

“You may have met him in connection with collecting,” March suggested. “Search your memory. He was an old man with white hair and a long, white beard—quite a patriarch, in fact.”

“A good many old men in London correspond with that description,” Ambrose remarked. “I fear, sir, that I cannot help you. I do not recollect ever meeting the eccentric gentleman in question.”

“And yet my information certainly goes to prove that you do know him—know him quite intimately.”

The sharp features of the old fellow were a perfect blank.

“What you have told me is greatly interesting,” he remarked. “The old man left twenty thousand pounds worth of antiques, you say. A good thing he left a will, eh?”

“Yes—for the relatives.”

“Who are they?” queried Ambrose.

“Well, clients of mine who do not yet wish their identity to be disclosed. The old man committed suicide, as I have said, and they naturally feel some little hesitation,” replied the pseudo-solicitor, believing that the old man credited his explanation.

“Ah, of course, I quite understand. Naturally they do not desire the world to know they are inheriting a suicide’s estate, eh?”

March nodded in the affirmative, twisting his gold signet-ring around the little finger of his left hand.

“I understood you to say that the will made certain revelations, eh?” old Ambrose asked. “Most interesting. What did it reveal—some secret?”

“Yes; a very curious secret concerning himself—one which, if divulged, would create an enormous sensation.”

Ambrose knit his brows and was silent for a few seconds. How much, he wondered, did the detective know?

“Then I take it that the dead man was not what he had represented himself to be, eh?” he remarked.

“No. His will has made clear several points which have been hitherto regarded as mysterious,” replied the solicitor.

“Well,” remarked the shrewd old man of mystery, “the will must be proved in due course, and these remarkable revelations of which you speak will then be made public. There will be no suppressing them then, will there?”

His visitor saw that he had made an unfortunate slip and hastened to recover himself. Old Ambrose was, however, as wary as his interrogator.

“The revelations will have to become public, whatever they are,” he went on. “Surely it is very unfortunate for your clients that they are contained in the will. Many men very foolishly make confessions or place records in their wills which are both injudicious and improper, and in dying bring pain upon the living.”

“Yes, I quite agree,” declared March. “It is extremely unfortunate for my clients, because the revelation has reference to a serious crime.”

“A crime!” exclaimed Ambrose quickly, looking straight into the detective’s face.

“Yes—a mysterious affair, the truth of which is revealed by Goodrick’s statement.”

“Was this Goodrick a criminal, then?”

“No. I’m glad, for my clients’ sake, that he was not. But by this statement the dead man wrote before his death a terrible crime has been placed upon the shoulders of one who has hitherto been entirely unsuspected.”

Ambrose held his breath. What his visitor said would have caused any other man in a similar position, and holding the secret knowledge which he held, to betray some signs of nervousness. But even under his visitor’s hard gaze he remained perfectly calm, unperturbed, unflinching.

“Not a nice prospect for the unsuspected person,” he merely remarked with a careless laugh.

“Not very,” admitted the other. “But I was certainly given to understand that you were well acquainted with the man Goodrick, and for that reason I ventured to call, in order to see if you could give me any information regarding him or his recent movements.”

“I thought you said he was eccentric, and something of a recluse.”

“So he was. But his actions on the night of his death appear to have been mysterious,” March said. “Are you really quite certain that you have no knowledge of him?” he added, looking inquiringly into the dark eyes.

“My dear sir, if I had, I would most willingly render you any assistance possible,” declared the old man. “I expect your information concerns someone else of my name. Ambrose is not uncommon.”

“No. It is certainly quite clear,” declared the detective positively. “John Ambrose of Wansey Street.”

“Well, that’s certainly me,” laughed the old fellow. “I quite anticipate that if I could furnish you with information you would readily pay for it, eh?”

“Most willingly,” the other assured him at once.

“And most eagerly would I be ready to earn a trifle,” Ambrose remarked; “for I am by no means well off.”

“But are you quite positive that you’ve never met Richard Goodrick?”

“Never met him in my life, I much regret to say.”

“Or a Catholic priest, Don Mario Mellini?”

“I don’t like priests,” snapped the other. “I hate Catholics.”

The detective was nonplussed. He prided himself that he could always tell when a man spoke the truth, and certainly, as far as he could see, this old fellow, blinking at him through his spectacles, did not seem to be concealing any knowledge of the mysterious recluse of Pimlico.

“Well!” he exclaimed at last. “My information was so exact that I confess I came here in the full expectation of learning something of interest. See, here!” he added, taking some five-pound notes from his pocket. “I brought a hundred pounds in readiness to pay you for any information you could furnish me.”

“In order to earn the money it would be quite easy for me to fake up some information, my dear sir,” replied the cunning old fellow. “But I am an honest man, and though I’m sorely in need of money I do not desire to gain it by such means.”

“Then you really can tell me absolutely nothing?” asked March, bending persuasively towards the old man in spectacles.

“Absolutely nothing. I have never met this mysterious person—at least, not to my knowledge. Of course, we may have met casually in some sale-room, or some place where our common tastes may have led us. But as to possessing any knowledge of him—well, I do not. Is the inquiry you are making so very important that you can afford to pay so generously for information?”

“Yes,” was the prompt reply. “My clients are sparing no expense in order to get at the exact truth.”

“It, of course, means money to them.”

“They are not regarding that; they are seeking to preserve the honour of the dead.”

“Not exactly a profitable proceeding sometimes, eh?” growled the old fellow in a rather changed manner. “When a man dies, his honour dies with him. Men who achieve great honours are usually the mere favourites of fortune. Actual personal merit seldom, alas! brings with it deserved honour. Did not Dryden say that honour was an empty bubble?”

“The personal honour of my clients—or, rather, one of them—is at stake, and it is for me to gather information which will remove any stigma which may have been placed upon it,” Mr. March said, his quick eyes wandering about the dim, shabby room, for he was still unconvinced, even though the old man had been so blank in his knowledge of Richard Goodrick.

“Well, I regret very much that, for my own sake pecuniarily, I am unable to furnish you with information,” declared Ambrose, with a clever affectation of ignorance. “What you have told me is certainly most interesting. I shall look forward to the proving of the will, and the sensation which you say the revelation must cause. The papers will be full of it—eh?”

“Yes,” replied March slowly, looking the man straight in the face. “I suppose, in due course, they will.”

“I expect that your informant, whoever he was, either mistook me for some other person, or else he made a blunder in the name. I’ve lived here a couple of months, and before that I lived in Albany Road, Clerkenwell. If it is somebody named Ambrose who knew this mysterious man in Pimlico, it certainly was not myself!”

With this the detective had to be satisfied. So cleverly, and with such cool disregard of his own peril, did the wily old man deny all knowledge of the mysterious Richard Goodrick that at last, after some further discussion, he convinced Medland that the anonymous communication was, after all, only a mischievous hoax.

So, full of disappointment, the detective apologised and departed from the house, leaving John Ambrose to rub his thin, bony hands and laugh weirdly at his own success.

“But I mustn’t remain here much longer!” he croaked to himself, adding in a low, hard voice: “Don Mario must get away at once. I wonder who has given me away—who it is who can possibly suspect? Has Maidee the least suspicion, I wonder, that I am not the Uncle John she once knew?”

CHAPTER XIV.

INTRODUCES A VISITOR

THE police, in the absence of any direct clue to the perpetrator, or perpetrators, of the double crime, were working very slowly.

The death of the mysterious Richard Goodrick had puzzled them greatly. Though the heads of Scotland Yard—all of them experts in detection of various branches of crime—had sat in council several times, yet they had failed to discover anything tangible upon which to base any theory.

Medland believed that the old priest might know something concerning the eccentric man. But he still could not be found, although the aid of the Italian Consul had been invoked.

“Lor’ bless yer, sir; why, yes!” cried Mrs. Ayres when Medland on the following morning called and showed her a photograph of the late Sir George Ravenscourt. “That’s certainly the gentleman wot called and saw Mr. Goodrick! I opened the door to ’im. They sat together for nearly two hours, I think.”

“You didn’t overhear anything, I suppose?” asked the detective eagerly.

“Only that they seemed excited after a bit; an’ I ’eard their voices raised, as though they were a-quarrellin’.”

“What did they say? It’s most important that I should know.”

“Oh, I don’t know, sir. To me it seemed as ’ow the gentleman who called wanted Mr. Goodrick to do somethink, an’ ’e wouldn’t. ’E was a-offerin’ ’im money to do somethink—commit a crime, perhaps.”

“Money!” echoed the detective, pricking up his ears. “Why haven’t you told me this before?”

“Well, because I thought you wouldn’t believe me, sir. You seems so disbelievin’,” replied the woman.

“No, I’m not. You are mistaken. Tell me everything, my good woman, now come,” said Medland persuasively.

“Well, I didn’t ’ear much, but what I did was rather startlin’. The gentleman was actually offerin’ my lodger fifty thousand pounds!”

“Fifty thousand! What for?”

“Ah! that I can’t tell you, sir. It was to do somethink, but I couldn’t understand what,” was the woman’s reply.

“And that Italian priest?”

“Old Don Mario? Oh! I don’t know anythink about ’im.”

Medland reflected, and by doing so grew more puzzled. Fifty thousand pounds was the sum he had found in the safe in Carlton House Terrace.

What possible action of old Goodrick’s could be worth such a sum to the Baronet? He recollected, too, the mysterious source from which the money had come.

“Is this all that you know, Mrs. Ayres?” he asked persuasively. “Tell me everything, won’t you?”

“I’ve told you everythink, sir. But I do wish you’d have the old man’s room cleared out. I can’t abear to go into it now. And I want to have it done up and let it again.”

“But we are paying you the rent, Mrs. Ayres,” replied the detective. “Don’t worry about that. Keep it locked for the present.” Then he added: “I presume Goodrick refused to comply with Sir George’s wish—refused to accept the money offered him; and could it be for that reason that he was killed?”

“That’s my idea, sir.”

Medland was silent. Don Mario’s disappearance was curious; and yet he was a foreigner, and had evidently left London. All along, the detective’s theory had been that the motive of the mysterious old man’s murder was in order to suppress some secret.

Presently he left the house and returned to the police headquarters, where the information he had gathered completely baffled those who were busy in endeavouring to unravel the mystery.

If the fifty thousand pounds had been missing, then the crime would be rendered more easy of solution. But as matters stood, the problem had, to the police, been rendered all the more complex.

One man alone knew the truth, that man of marvellous craft and cunning, so clever, far-seeing and fearless; the man of many disguises, the past-master of deceit, one of the shrewdest, if not the shrewdest, and most remarkable person in the whole metropolis.

And he had snapped his fingers at the police, and laughed at their ignorance. Both the boldness of his defiance and the cleverness of his imposture were proof of his amazing impudence and wonderful versatility.

A few evenings after Medland’s visit to Mrs. Ayres and her identification of the photograph, Gordon Cunningham was seated in the smoking-room at the Marquis of Portslade’s, in Grosvenor Square, in conversation with Mr. Bridgman, the Home Secretary, an elderly, clean-shaven, legal-looking man in sombre black.

They had been sitting in a corner discussing a matter concerning Ireland, at that moment the subject of a heated debate in the House, when suddenly the Home Secretary turned to the young man and, looking straight into his face, asked:

“By the way, why are you so infernally inquisitive, Cunningham, regarding that recent affair in Carlton House Terrace—eh? They tell me you’ve been worrying them constantly at Scotland Yard for information.”

“Which I don’t get,” added Gordon, removing the after-dinner cigar from his lips. There had been a political dinner, and a dozen other well-known politicians were in the room.

“No, I don’t suppose you do,” replied the Minister. “I had a report from the Commissioner of Police to-day, saying that you are threatening to ask a question in the House regarding the death of our old friend Sir George.”

“Yes, and I intend to do so if I receive no satisfactory reply,” declared the young man frankly. “I’m sorry to worry you, Bridgman, but I feel very strongly upon the point.”

“Why?” asked the famous lawyer, suddenly interested. “Is it wise to criticise the action of the police, do you think?”

“My dear sir, in this case the police are wilfully hushing up a very remarkable case. I admit that the coroner’s jury returned a verdict of suicide, but Sir George never took his own life. Of that I’m positive!”

“Why, at Lady Andover’s, ten days ago, I recollect you declaring across the dinner-table that Sir George was in a financial hole, and no doubt committed suicide,” remarked the Cabinet Minister in surprise.

“Yes, but I find I had been misinformed. I am quite certain now that it was not a case of suicide,” Gordon declared. “Fifty thousand pounds were found in the safe in his room.”

“Why are you so certain? Have you any evidence?”

“Nothing that I can bring forward.”

“But Sir George’s wife, his niece, his butler—all three were there as soon as the body was discovered. How is it they have not protested against the verdict?”

“Because they have been forbidden to say anything,” was the reply. “I have, however, discovered certain curious facts which compel me to believe that Sir George fell by the hand of an assassin. You know quite well that he left some remarkable statement or other behind him—which was not put in evidence.”

“Officially, I only know that a verdict of suicide was returned, in which case it does not further concern the police.”

“That is the curt reply I have received from the Commissioner,” said Gordon; “but I intend to put down a question, and demand an inquiry. The whole organisation at Scotland Yard is antiquated and rotten.”

“No, no,” replied the Minister. “I don’t think you can condemn the Metropolitan Police so entirely as that. Remember that in the present state of the law they often have a very difficult and delicate task.”

“I do not condemn the men of the Criminal Investigation Department. It is the system to which I object. Nowadays the Metropolitan Police cannot compare with that of Paris, Berlin or Rome. Why? Excess of caution is one of its worst failings, and that is due to the unwritten rule which decrees that if a detective makes an error he is rarely, if ever, given an opportunity of repeating the offence, as he is at once relegated to the uniform branch of the service. The result is that your average detective, rather than act in the interests of justice, always gives the suspected one the benefit of the doubt. So hundreds of delinquents yearly go scot free for this reason. In every other detective service an arrest would be made, and the suspected one interrogated.”

“I admit that one or two reforms are necessary, yet I’m not of opinion that in the present position of the Government the time is ripe to open the eyes of the public,” the Minister replied, drawing slowly at his cigar.

“Myself, I think no time ought to be lost in pointing out that the Criminal Investigation Department is not what it should be, owing to the fact that its officers are all drawn from the uniformed service—men who, in the main, come from rural districts. I cast no reflection upon them, for they do their best, but, I ask, are such men as shrewd, as educated, and as clever in investigating crime as the French or Italian detective—a man chosen because of his talent in that direction? Constables in uniform develop a peculiar ambling gait, and by this the London detective always betrays himself—his confrère in Paris, never. No, my dear Bridgman, the Scotland Yard detective is, each year, growing more and more incompetent. You have had some good men, some very excellent men, but nearly all have now retired. Indeed, under your present system, you seem to retire your most useful men. Only recently I understand that a sergeant—a naturalised Russian, who had been many years employed in the extradition branch, and who was a very clever officer—was retired merely because, owing to the fact of not receiving an English education, he could not pass the examination for an inspectorship. No, my dear sir, you want new blood at Scotland Yard—which is only ‘new’ in name. You want clever, intelligent men, not plain-clothes police-constables, if you are to unravel the mysteries of crimes which nowadays are succeeding each other with such alarming rapidity.”

“I cannot for the life of me see what this has to do with the unfortunate death of our mutual friend,” remarked Mr. Bridgman.

“It has. Just because Scotland Yard is faced with an inscrutable problem—with a mystery which is most remarkable and utterly bewildering—they coolly arrange for a verdict of suicide. And not only in that case—but in another, the death of some mysterious old man over at Pimlico.”

“And how do you know all this, pray?” inquired the Home Secretary, looking at him keenly.

“I—well, the fact is, I am in possession of certain information, Bridgman,” replied the young man, with a slight hesitation. “I tell you that there is a great mystery surrounding the death of both these men. They died by the same hand.”

“Are you certain of this, Cunningham?” asked the Home Secretary very surprised, for he had believed the report furnished by the police.

“I’m quite certain,” Gordon said earnestly. “And if the police will not reveal to me—in confidence, of course—the efforts they are making to solve the problem, then I shall put the question in the House, and expose the methods by which they manipulate evidence before a coroner, and hush up serious crime because of their own incompetence.”

“But surely, Cunningham, you’ll never do that! It would be a huge scandal in such an important public department,” cried the Minister, with undisguised alarm.

“Scandal or no, I don’t care. My friend Ravenscourt was murdered, and I intend that the assassin shall be unmasked,” replied Gordon firmly. “Therefore, perhaps, it would be as well if you ordered the Commissioner to reply to my queries—I, on my part, pledging myself to secrecy.”

“But, you see, the police will declare that to reveal their action might be to defeat the ends of justice.”

“I do not care. If they set up that plea, then I shall at once put the question upon the paper.”

The Home Secretary looked at the young man. He did not like the threat. Gordon Cunningham was a young and impetuous man, and an attack upon Scotland Yard would greatly increase his popularity.

Just at that moment their host suggested bridge, and they were compelled to rise.

“The matter rests with you, Bridgman,” said the young man; “but remember I mean to act as I have said.”

“Well,” remarked the Home Secretary, “I’ll think it over. I question very much if Scotland Yard will depart from its usual course—even in face of your threat.”

“Then I shall ask the question,” laughed Gordon, as he passed out of the room.

“I believe I shall obtain the information I seek,” the young man muttered to himself as, a couple of hours later, he was driving home to his chambers in Bruton Street. “Bridgman does not welcome the idea of a question in the House. He believes I am acting for the public welfare, and at the same time seeking a little cheap advertisement. He, at least, does not dream the real reason why I am so desirous of knowing in which direction the police inquiries are being directed.”

As he ascended the stairs and entered his chambers, Newton, his man, came forward, saying:

“There is a gentleman waiting to see you, sir. His business, he says, is very important, so he has remained. He’s been here nearly an hour, sir.”

“Who is he?” asked the young legislator, glancing at the stranger’s card as he stood in his cosy, luxurious, dimly-lit sitting-room, furnished with low divans, Eastern hangings, and quantities of bric-à-brac which he had collected in his travels in the Balkans, Asia Minor, and Arabia.

“He’s a stranger,” said his man. “Evidently he is in a great hurry to see you.”

Gordon sighed, for he was very tired after a long day and the fevered atmosphere of the bridge-table.

“Oh! show him in,” he said, casting off his coat and advancing to the fire.

A moment later a tall, well-dressed, middle-aged man entered, carrying his crush hat in his hand, and, bowing politely, expressed regret at being compelled to call at that hour—for it was nearly eleven o’clock.

The visitor did not look more than fifty-five, and rather dandified in his smartly-cut dress clothes, black overcoat, and patent-leather boots. Upon his face was a pleasant, urbane smile.

Yet, as the dim light from the shaded lamps in the old brass Turkish lanterns fell across his profile, it revealed the sharply-cut features of John Ambrose, the man who was such a past-master in the art of disguise.

Gordon Cunningham, even though the light was dim and restful, instantly recognised his visitor. He stood there gasping, open-mouthed.

Ambrose, entirely unlike his real self, was quick to realise this. Yet, coolly and unperturbed he stood before him, his hand in his overcoat pocket, wherein reposed a big Browning revolver. His eager finger was upon the trigger. He would shoot through his coat if necessary. He had no compunction—and he took no risks.

John Ambrose, full of devilish cunning as always, was there for a purpose.

“Well?” gasped the young man, his face pale as death.

“Well?” said the man of mystery. “So at last I have the opportunity of a chat with you. You don’t seem exactly overjoyed to see me—eh?”

CHAPTER XV.

FROM THE BEYOND

GORDON CUNNINGHAM sank upon the nearest divan, and for a few seconds covered his face with his hands.

“Go away!” he cried in dismay. “Spare me this, Tulloch! I thought—I always thought——”

“Yes; you thought that I was dead, my dear Gordon,” Ambrose said in a deep, meaning voice, and with an evil grin. “I see, however, that you have recognised me! Probably you guess the nature of my errand?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Leave me!”

“Not before I have had a serious talk with you, my dear fellow,” was his cold reply. “Come, sit up. Face me like a man,” he urged.

The young fellow, crushed and trembling, did not stir.

“Ah!” the elder man exclaimed with a sneer, his appearance entirely different from when he had sat huddled up in the train. “I see, you can’t do that, eh? Well—well, it is hardly surprising. And yet I am here in your own interests. Raise your head, and listen to me. First, you may love Maidee Lambton—but I happen to know that she suspects the truth!”

“Suspects!” gasped the young man, raising his white face, his eyes staring wildly as he rose and closed the door carefully. “Does Maidee suspect?” he inquired in a low, hoarse whisper. He seemed filled with horror at the very thought that Maidee might have guessed his secret.

“Yes,” replied the other quietly.

“How do you know?”

“I met her the other day—by pure chance. I did not let her know who I was, but from what she told me I am certain that a deep and terrible suspicion has entered her heart.”

“And what did you say? You did not give me away?”

“Why should I?” asked the elder dandified man who, having removed his overcoat, stood upon the centre of the fine Persian rug, a smart, well-groomed figure in his perfectly-cut evening clothes. “Is it to my own interests to reveal anything?”

“No, it isn’t. It would be bad for you—if you dared!” Gordon snapped with a scowl. “If—if you told her anything, I—I’d, by Gad, Tulloch!—I’d kill you!”

“My dear Gordon, I know very well you would,” laughed his visitor. “But that isn’t the point. She suspects—and you must at once remove the suspicion.”

“How? Give me your advice. You are always so far-seeing and clever. How shall I act?”

“Take up in Parliament the mystery of Sir George Ravenscourt’s death, declare that he died by the hand of an assassin,” he said, looking straight into the other’s eyes, “and demand that Scotland Yard shall investigate. By adopting such a course you will exhibit a bold front. She believes in you, and if you bring up the subject in the House it will remove from her mind all suspicion.”

“Curiously enough,” said the young man, “I had decided upon acting just as you have suggested—alleging that it was not a case of suicide, and that the police have hushed up the matter for either a political or some ulterior motive.”

“Yes,” said the man he had addressed as Tulloch. “It is the only way. You love Maidee, eh?”

“I do, most devotedly. Surely you must know that!”

“But you must not disguise from yourself the fact that you are sitting upon the edge of a volcano,” the elder man remarked, looking across at the other in the dim half-light of the Eastern room. “You are a coming man, welcomed everywhere as a Cabinet Minister in embryo; yet—well, I should think,” he added, lowering his voice to a low, soft whisper, “I should think you can have but little real peace of mind with that skeleton in your cupboard—with the constant fear that the affair may be found out.”

“But who knows—except yourself, Tulloch?” asked the young man in a hard broken voice. “Surely she does not know—I mean, hers are mere suspicions.”

The elder man’s face relaxed into a strange, sinister smile, but in the uncertain light Gordon Cunningham did not distinguish it. His visitor’s face was exultant, triumphant.

“Of course, she has not forgotten, there are suspicions—yes, strong suspicions, my dear fellow. You must act at once in order to allay them. Show a bold front.”

“That was already my intention.”

“Pursue your usual rôle of anxious inquirer in the interests of justice into the death of Sir George. Criticise Scotland Yard, and boldly condemn the whole police system. Create a scandal—it will increase your popularity and remove Maidee’s suspicions.”

“Very well, I will,” he replied. “As a matter of fact, I was only talking to Bridgman, the Home Secretary, to-night upon the subject, and he urged me not to put a question in the House.”

“Disregard him. Put down the question at once.”

And to this course the young man agreed, little knowing the abyss which the man Tulloch had opened before him, or the exquisite duplicity of the man whom he believed to be his friend.

Tulloch was a man who knew certain of his secrets, yet he had every confidence in him. He had met him under somewhat strange circumstances. Tulloch was a studious man and knew much concerning the complicated tangle of Balkan politics, therefore a friendship had sprung up between the pair. At one time, a year ago, they had been almost inseparable, for to Tulloch’s promptings and his clever diplomacy Gordon Cunningham had, in a great measure, owed his present “boom.”

Then suddenly he had awakened to the fact that Tulloch was not exactly the straightforward, honest person he had represented himself to be. Gradually the truth had become forced upon him that he had placed himself within the toils of an adventurer.

So Gordon then decided to act diplomatically. He picked a quarrel with Tulloch, and the latter, with that calm unconcern which was his most remarkable characteristic, had shrugged his shoulders and eleven months ago gone off to the Continent. A fortnight later came the news through a mutual friend that he had caught typhoid fever, and had died in an obscure hotel called the Tazzo d’Oro, in Ancona, on the Adriatic.

Gordon Cunningham had once again breathed freely. The man who had knowledge of the strange skeleton in his cupboard no longer lived; therefore he was free—free to love Maidee, free to rise to the high station which his friends everywhere predicted.

It was hardly surprising, therefore, that sudden sight of him, standing there alive in that dimly-lit room in Bruton Street, was the reverse of reassuring. His enemy, the only man who knew his secret, had risen, as if from the grave.

Yet Tulloch had made no threats. He made no reference even to certain discreditable facts of the past, save that which is recorded in these pages.

Nevertheless, in the brief silence that followed, the young man seated upon the divan, again staring and pensive, was wondering by what means Tulloch suspected the truth concerning the affair at Carlton House Terrace. Yet was he not a most remarkable man? No secret had ever seemed safe from him, however strictly it might be kept. He possessed some weird power by which he read the inner lives of men as others read a printed book.

Indeed, from the first moment they had met, Cunningham had held in a certain degree of awe this man whose remarkably wide political knowledge had been of such use to him, and whose interest in national defence was so full of keen enthusiasm. There was something decidedly uncanny about him—though what it was he could never describe.

That he was an adventurer—a calm, unscrupulous and clever adventurer—there could be no doubt. His friends were mostly vulgar undesirables, and he certainly was no better than his associates.

He had, without asking permission, selected a cigar from the box upon the table, and was engaged in lighting it.

The young legislator sat gazing upon him without a word. What were this man’s intentions? he was wondering. Had there been some motive in the pretence that he had died in Ancona? Assuredly so. He recollected how the false news had been conveyed to him by letter from one of the man’s friends.

Much the young man owed to this strange, unscrupulous person whose knowledge of men and things was so wide and remarkable. Tulloch could engineer anything, and gradually he had wound himself into his confidence and learnt his secrets almost unconsciously.

“Look here!” said Gordon, rising to his feet and facing his visitor boldly. “Why have you come back here, Tulloch? Heron wrote to me, telling me that you had died in Italy.”

“Well, he was a trifle mistaken,” laughed his friend. “I’m quite well aware that my presence here is not—well, not exactly pleasant, Gordon. I know just a little too much, eh?”

“Yes, you do!” cried the young man angrily. “You first misled me with news of your death, and now, I suppose, your intention is to blackmail me, eh? Well, how much do you want for your silence?” he asked, hoarsely.

“Nothing, my dear boy, nothing,” was Tulloch’s reply. “I never have blackmailed you, and do not intend to do so.”

“But you’ve sailed pretty near the wind, haven’t you?” asked Gordon, fiercely. “You remember how you made me back that bill for a thousand for Heron—and I had to pay?”

The man who was such a past-master in the art of disguise and subterfuge shrugged his shoulders, answering:

“Not a very great price for all I have done in your interests, Cunningham, eh? Reflect a moment. Where would you have been without my aid—without my silence?”

“I know. I quite admit all that,” he said impatiently. “But I want you to be straight and open with me. Why are you here?”

“Purely in your own interests. You are in a hole, and I’m assisting you out of it.”

“How do you know?”

“By the same means that I have discovered other things concerning your rather remarkable career,” replied the man with an evil grin. “Don’t you think you are a very lucky young fellow to have risen to become the most popular of the coming politicians, eh?” he asked, blowing a cloud of smoke from his lips. “Examine yourself, Cunningham, and ask yourself whether your actual worth and your extraordinary intelligence are really as great as that attributed to you. You are acclaimed a genius. Why? Because, by my influence, certain journalists declared that you were. The public read, and became convinced. To-day is not an age when merit is acknowledged. In the mad hurry of this modern world of ours there is no time to think, hence the self-advertiser is accepted at his own estimation, and the possession of an ample income is of far greater import to the man who wants to ‘get on’ than the possession of brains. Most honours are merely matters of money—and judicious advertising. And you’ve been advertised widely enough—in all conscience.”

“I admit it, Tulloch. But you are always so infernally blunt. You can lay a man out upon the dissecting-table and examine his conscience—nay, his very soul—just as you have often done mine.”

“I found very little honour in yours,” declared the elder man with a laugh.

“Yes!” cried the young fellow in a changed voice. “You tempted me to do what I did, and now you are here to taunt me!”

“That’s it,” laughed Tulloch, examining the end of his cigar. “Abuse me—your best friend. How strange it is that you are not more grateful!”

“Grateful to you for returning here when I had so foolishly believed that I had seen the last of you, and heard the last of your evil counsel for ever!” cried Gordon, fiercely.

“My dear fellow, I merely came here in order to make a suggestion entirely in your own interests,” declared the other.

“Yes, but tell me,” asked Gordon, “how do you know that Ravenscourt did not commit suicide? Answer me that question,” he demanded wildly, advancing towards him threateningly. “You, who possess a supernatural power to fathom men’s secrets and read their innermost hearts, shall tell me by what means you learnt the truth—or, by Gad!” and he clenched his fist, biting his thin white lip.

“Enough!” replied the other, standing quite calm in the centre of the room and laughing. “I think I know the truth, my dear Gordon. That is sufficient. Act as I have directed; demand an explanation of the action of Scotland Yard. Save yourself now, before it becomes too late, or——”

“Well! Why should I obey your orders, pray?”

“Because if you do not,” answered Tulloch, fixing his keen, crafty eyes upon the young man in the dim light—“because if you do not, Maidee herself shall know the truth!”

“You—you would do that, eh?” he gasped, his face showing white and haggard in the gloom. “You would betray me—you infernal fiend!”

“Yes,” was the cold, hard response of the weird man of mystery. “I am here for that purpose. Obey me, or she shall know the disgraceful truth!”

CHAPTER XVI.

A SCENE IN THE HOUSE

NEXT evening, in response to an invitation over the telephone, Gordon Cunningham snatched a couple of hours from his duties at the House and dined en famille at Mrs. Beresford’s, in Gloucester Terrace.

He, however, found Maidee cold and suspicious. Her greeting was not warm and affectionate, as usual, and she seemed to be covertly watching his every movement with her big, velvety eyes. The widow, in her neat black, remained very sad, and spoke but little at dinner; therefore Gordon did not announce his intention of putting the question in the House until he found himself alone with Maidee in the pretty morning-room, the two elder ladies having gone upstairs to the drawing-room.

He took her in his arms and kissed her white brow, as was his habit; but he felt that through her ran an instinctive thrill not of love, but of repulsion.

What did she suspect?

“Maidee,” he said after a pause, “do you know that I have resolved to tackle Scotland Yard, and demand the truth concerning Sir George’s death?”

“The truth!” she echoed, staring at him. “I—I don’t understand. What do you mean? What truth?”

“Well, I have, all along, held a suspicion that Sir George did not commit suicide. Therefore I shall to-morrow put a question in the House, asking why the matter has been hushed up.”

“Perhaps for political reasons,” she remarked meaningly.

“I want your opinion,” he said, holding the pale, nervous girl in his arms. “Do you think it was suicide?”

“No,” she declared; “it was murder.” It was the first time she had admitted the truth.

“Then why have the police misled us?” he asked. “Why are they shielding the culprit?”

She glanced swiftly at his pale, intense face.

“Probably they will not shield him any longer, Gordon, when you put the question,” she said.

“I intend that the death of Sir George shall be avenged!” declared the young man firmly. “I know that from a political point it is injudicious of me to criticise our police methods at the present moment. But——”

“But the assassin must not go scot free, Gordon!” she interrupted in a low, changed voice. “Sir George was killed, and his murderer must be brought to justice—whoever he may be!”

“I intend to do all in my power to achieve that end,” he assured her, looking into her sweet countenance.

She was undecided. Were her suspicions well grounded—those horrible suspicions which had arisen within her, and to which she had referred in so veiled a manner two days before when, for a few moments, she had seen Uncle John? Or was she upon a false scent?

For the past forty-eight hours she had been sorely troubled. Scarcely had she slept because of the awful thought which had seized her—that he, the man she loved so dearly, was an assassin.

To Uncle John she had not openly expressed her belief that Gordon had knowledge of the crime. They had, however, discussed the point. So full had her mind been of the terrible suspicion which had arisen within it, that she had quite unconsciously revealed to the old man the trend of her belief.

For him, clever and crafty as he was, that had been sufficient. He had acted at once, and had now reduced Gordon Cunningham to a state of terror. For what reason was known only to himself. His actions were frequently mysterious, and yet in them there was always a definite and direct purpose.

Maidee had sunk into a big easy chair, and her lover was sitting upon the arm in an indolent attitude, his hand upon her shoulder. He had lit a cigarette at her invitation, and was slowly blowing a cloud of blue smoke from his lips.

She, on her part, remained silent, pondering. Was it fair to poor Gordon to prejudge him? she asked herself. And yet how very easy it would have been for him, a constant visitor to the house, to have entered on that fatal night at Sir George’s invitation, and strike him down while he sat at his table! Nevertheless, there was, she recollected, a serious flaw in such a theory. When Sir George was struck he had evidently been writing for some time, a proof that the assassin must have crept noiselessly into the room. He certainly was not present with the victim’s knowledge, for was not Sir George engaged in writing a most confidential document? Yet he might have entered with Sir George, and afterwards left, his host believing him to have gone home, whereas he had secreted himself in one or other of the dark rooms running off the hall.

But the main point was motive. What possible motive could Gordon have in securing Sir George’s death? As far as she could see, there was none—absolutely none.

The eyes of the pair met. The girl held her breath for a second; then, with quick resolve, she threw both her arms about his neck and kissed him—kissed him with the same passionate fervour as of old, crying:

“Gordon—oh, Gordon! I have been so very unhappy.”

“Unhappy, darling!” he exclaimed. “Why?”

“Because—because of all this terrible trouble which has lately fallen upon our house—because of the mystery of it all,” she sobbed, bursting into tears.

“I know,” he said in a low voice. “I know how greatly you must have been upset. I wonder that you and Lady Ravenscourt don’t go abroad somewhere for a time.”

“Abroad!” she echoed, raising her pretty face to his. “No, she won’t go abroad. She intends, she says, to remain and see if she can assist the police in unravelling the mystery.”

“Scotland Yard will very quickly become active when I ask the question,” he said with a grim laugh. “No Government Department likes a question put in the House, for it always reflects upon it.”

“The police are bunglers,” declared Maidee. “They ought to have solved the problem long ago.”

“I can’t think why they hushed it up and secured a verdict of suicide,” remarked her lover. “Depend upon it, there is much more mystery surrounding the affair than we imagine. Because of that, Scotland Yard took such an unusual course.”

Maidee looked again into her lover’s face, and there saw honesty and straightforwardness written. Its expression was entirely unlike that when he had discussed the affair with his whilom friend Tulloch. But Gordon Cunningham was a very good actor. He had “played to the gallery” ever since he had left college—and with remarkable success.

He smiled upon his well-beloved, and, with her soft little hand held in his, he bent and imprinted a long, passionate kiss upon her ready lips—a kiss which she reciprocated.

He realised that, just as Tulloch had predicted, whatever suspicions she had held, they were now swept away by his apparent boldness in putting a poignant question in Parliament.

“Do you know, darling,” he said, as his arm stole around her neat waist as she sat in the chair, a sweet and pretty figure in her dinner-gown of black chiffon, which increased the whiteness of her neck and arms, “do you know that a great deal of your disquietude would have been avoided if you had only told me your suspicions from the first? Instead of that, you led me to believe that you agreed with the verdict of the coroner’s jury.”

“I was compelled. The police made us all promise silence. Had you not told me of your suspicions, Gordon, I should not have mentioned mine.”

“Surely the precautions of the police are in themselves mysterious,” he exclaimed. “I suppose it is not possible that some constable or detective is the criminal—that they know it, and have hushed it up in order to prevent a sensation—eh?”

“I never thought of that!” gasped Maidee, half starting from her chair. “If such were the case the authorities would combine in a conspiracy of silence, would they not?”

“Exactly; just as they are doing now,” replied her lover. “A constable may have entered the house in secret, and perhaps, in a fit of homicidal mania, struck down Sir George.”

The girl was silent. The suggestion appealed to her as a possible solution of the mystery. How unjust she had been, she reflected, to have entertained suspicions of dear Gordon—the man who was all the world to her.

She entwined her bare arms about his neck once again, and kissed him fondly of her own accord, while his heart beat quickly in secret gratification that his diplomacy should have been so successful.

She loved him very dearly. Of that he was well aware. He, on his part, thought of no other woman but her. She was very young, it was true, but all London had voted her to be one of the prettiest girls in society, while Gordon had long ago realised that her disposition was an extremely sweet one, that her intelligence was remarkable, and that they possessed an affinity of soul.

She had suddenly brightened and become her own vivacious self again.

“Yes,” she said eagerly; “ask the question, Gordon. Awaken the police from their apathy, and compel them to solve the mystery. Their action has been simply disgraceful!”

“To-morrow, at question time, I shall do so,” he said. “I have already framed it and put it down. The Home Secretary is furious, I hear.”

For nearly an hour the well-matched pair sat together, happy in each other’s love, he smoking in a careless attitude, his arm about her waist, and she gazing up at him with eyes full of an unbounded affection. And their lips met in solemn pledges of undying love.

Afterwards they ascended to the drawing-room, where sat Mrs. Beresford and Lady Ravenscourt, the former playing patience and the other reading.

Maidee seated herself at the grand piano, and, at Gordon’s request, sang several of those sweet little French chansons which always charmed him so. Possessing a well-trained soprano voice, and knowing French so well, she sang them with wonderful vivacity.

Gordon said nothing to the widow of his intentions of the morrow, for fear of paining her, and about eleven o’clock he bowed over the hands of the two ladies, saying:

“A division is expected about midnight, so I have to get across to the House again,” and, wishing them good-night, he kissed Maidee in the hall, and, entering the taxi which had been telephoned for, drove away.

Next afternoon, just before the House went in to prayers, a small knot of members stood in the lobby discussing Cunningham’s question upon the paper.

“Most injudicious at this moment!” snapped a stout, bald-headed man representing a Scottish constituency.

“Merely for self-advertisement!” declared a younger man, jealous of Gordon’s fame. “It’s scandalous that the time of the House should be taken up like this.”

“Well,” exclaimed another, a short, rather ill-dressed man, “there’s some mystery about Sir George Ravenscourt’s death, no doubt. I, for one, would like to see it satisfactorily cleared up. There are some funny rumours in the clubs.”

“No mystery at all,” asserted the bald-headed man. “He committed suicide. That was proved at the inquest.”

“We shall see,” replied the member for South-East Berkshire.

The lobby was the centre of an animated scene, as it always is before the Speaker takes the chair; members chattering eagerly, bustling to and fro, obtaining their correspondence from the post-office, giving instructions to their secretaries, or seated aside on the benches in private discussion. Two men, members of the public, were standing together in the corner of the lobby. One was a fair-haired young man—the other the thin, sad-faced Italian priest, now dressed in dark tweeds.

At last the members went into prayers, after which the Press and strangers were admitted to the galleries, and the House opened with a loud and commanding:

“Order-r-r! Order!” from the Speaker.

On each side of the House question-papers fluttered in the hands of members as, one after another, the questions were replied to by the Government, ever strenuous to retain the confidence of the country.

There were some very awkward ones regarding certain events in India, until at last Gordon Cunningham rose and called attention to the question put down in his name.

It was to ask the Home Secretary “if his attention has been directed to the suspicious and mysterious death of Sir George Ravenscourt, Baronet, a member of this House, who died in London on the night of January the seventeenth; whether it is not a fact that the coroner’s jury have returned a verdict of suicide; whether it is not a fact that all the evidence pointed conclusively to murder; whether the authorities have not taken strenuous steps to hush up the matter, and whether the police have not in their possession a certain document or documents of a very remarkable nature bearing upon the case?” He also asked whether the police had, in face of the verdict of the jury at the inquest, taken any steps to investigate the strange affair.

When Gordon resumed his seat, the Home Secretary rose from his seat on the Treasury bench, annoyance plainly apparent upon his clean-shaven countenance.

Gordon, breathless in expectation, sat looking at him on the other side of the House, with its rows of lounging members in all sorts of indolent attitudes.

The Minister was in the act of fumbling among his many papers, preparatory to replying, when a note was suddenly thrust into Cunningham’s hand.

The young man took it, tore it open, and glanced at its ill-written, ill-spelt contents. Then, with a strange look upon his face, he crushed it quickly into his jacket pocket.

A low cry escaped his lips next second, and several members seated near saw him half rise from the bench, then reel and fall heavily forward in a crumpled heap upon the floor, striking his head as he collapsed.

In an instant there was considerable confusion, and the Home Secretary, wondering what had occurred, resumed his seat without answering the question.

“The honourable member has fainted!” shouted someone, addressing the Speaker; and the proceedings were stopped while Cunningham was carried forth into the open air.

“Ah! nervous breakdown!” many members declared, shaking their heads wisely. “He’s been overworked,” said some; “Been burning the candle at both ends for a long time,” exclaimed others. “Poor Cunningham!” exclaimed several old parliamentary hands. “Feared he was too brilliant a young fellow to last! They say he takes drugs!”

And as he lay unconscious, with a doctor at his side, there, crushed in his jacket pocket, reposed a half-sheet of thumbed note-paper, blotted and scrawled, which gave plainly the cause of his sudden faintness—a message which, at any moment, might be discovered and read!

CHAPTER XVII.

TO PAY THE PRICE

TWO hours later, in the gathering London twilight, Gordon Cunningham was sitting alone beside the fire in his Eastern room at Bruton Street, silent and thoughtful.

The haggard look upon his pale countenance was sufficient index to his mind.

The doctor and one of his friends had brought him home in a taxi, and, now he had recovered, they had left him to rest. The fainting fit had, the medical man declared, been due to overwork, and complete rest was the only remedy.

Suddenly Newton opened the door noiselessly and brought in the evening paper which his master had ordered. Gordon glanced eagerly at it, and read the description of the scene and the expressions of regret at his unfortunate seizure.

“I was a fool—a cursed fool!” he cried fiercely, when his man had left the silent room, with its dark decorations and embroidered hangings. “I ought not to have trusted myself. And yet,” he added breathlessly, “I wonder—I wonder——”

He thrust his hands into his pockets, and in doing so felt a piece of paper. The contact caused him to start. He had not recollected it before!

He drew forth the dirty half-sheet of note-paper, and held it between his trembling fingers.

“I—I quite forgot it!” he gasped. “I ought to have destroyed it, but there wasn’t time. I don’t know what came over me—I seemed to be stricken down as though someone had dealt me a blow. And no wonder!”

He opened the paper, and his eyes again fell upon those ill-written lines, evidently in the round, bold hand of a child, by whom the original, written by a foreigner, had been copied.

They read:

“SIR,—Why do you dare ask a question upon a matter about which you yourself know sufficient? Instantly withdraw your impudent reflections upon the police, or you will receive a sudden surprise. Only you prevent your own exposure by withdrawing. If the question is asked, then the consequences will be swift and just, and the disgraceful truth will be known by the world.”

It was undated and unsigned—the mysterious message which had been handed along to him as he lolled upon the leather-covered bench, and had apparently come from nowhere.

Who had sent it?

Again he held his breath as he re-read those ominous lines, his thin, white lips pressed tightly together. What could it mean?

Surely it was not a trick on the part of the Government to evade an awkward inquiry?

No. Somebody knew! But who that somebody could be was a complete enigma. Was this Tulloch’s revenge?

What if one or other of his political friends had noticed him read that note and crush it into his pocket before his seizure! What if the curiosity of anybody had been aroused, and it had been taken out and read during his unconsciousness! What then?

From the report of that afternoon’s sitting of Parliament it appeared that the business of the House had been at once resumed after his removal, the Home Secretary refraining from replying to the question in the absence of the questioner.

The House had regarded the incident as somewhat curious, but not really more curious than many incidents which sometimes occur during its deliberations. Besides, it was known by everyone that young Cunningham was leading a terribly strenuous life, and a breakdown was not at all unexpected.

As he sat there, staring at the mysterious missive, the telephone bell rang sharply, and he rose and answered.

It was Maidee. She had just seen the report in the paper, and inquired anxiously whether he were now all right.

“Oh! I’m quite myself again, dearie,” he replied cheerfully over the ’phone. “The House seemed unusually close this afternoon, and I suppose I fainted—that’s all. It was at a most unfortunate moment. I’m very sick that I haven’t been able to get answers to my questions.”

“Never mind,” she exclaimed. “As long as you are right again, what matters, Gordon? You’ll be able to tackle the Home Secretary to-morrow. Are you coming round this evening? Do, if you feel well enough—won’t you, dear?”

“If I feel all right I will, of course. I shan’t go back to the House to-day.”

“That’s right,” was the reply. “You must really have a change. I insist upon it. I warned you the other day that you looked as if you wanted one. And now I do hope you’ll take my advice before you get really ill.”

“Well,” he laughed, “I’ll see. We’ll talk it over when I come round after dinner. Au revoir, dearest.”

And then he rang off.

“Ah! Maidee! Maidee!” he cried, wringing his hands as he paced the dim room in his feverish agony. “What can I do? How can I act? Gradually, by slow degrees, my enemies are now closing upon me. Soon—very soon—they will rise and crush me. I took one false step, and from it I have never been able to draw back. The evil powers of the one behind me pushed me forward irresistibly, until now I stand upon the very brink of the abyss. Ah! if you only knew the truth, Maidee——” he cried, covering his hard, drawn face with his hands. “If you only knew the truth you would pity me!”

Suddenly he halted, as though recollecting that he still held the strange warning.

“Who could have sent this?” he again asked himself. “What new enemy has now arisen against me? But, whoever it is, he knows something—the mysterious, unknown person who sent this holds me in the palm of his hand!”

The fact that it had been copied by a child was sufficient to show that the one who sent the warning intended to remain hidden.

“I must see Tulloch!” he gasped after a long silence. “He knows all secrets. I must seek his advice. But—but where is he? He left me no address. And yet if he sees to-day’s incident in the paper he most surely will return. Yes—I must once again seek the advice of the man who is my bête noire, the man in whose power I am so utterly and completely. Vainly I believed that his evil influence had passed out of my life for ever—that I was free at last. But alas!” he whispered hoarsely, “that cannot be now—now that I——”

Newton entered with letters, but Gordon tossed them aside unopened. The man had switched on the light, and was lowering the blinds when his master said:

“Mr. Tulloch may call—that elderly gentleman who waited for me. If he comes again I particularly want to see him, Newton. Tell him to wait.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the man gravely as he withdrew.

Under the dim, shaded lights in the Moorish arches of the room Gordon Cunningham looked very ill, and terribly worn. His eyes were sunken, his cheeks blanched, and his whole expression was as of one haunted by some terrible dread.

He crossed the room, examined himself in a long mirror, and his eyebrows contracted.

“Ah!” he sighed. “If I could only find Tulloch! I must see him.”

Then he took up the telephone, and after some delay made inquiry of three different men whom he knew to be friends of the man he had believed to be dead.

All these expressed surprise that they should be asked such a question. They each apparently regarded Gordon as a little eccentric, in view of the fact that Tulloch was known to have died in Italy.

The man was evidently avoiding his friends. He had always some ulterior motive, which was usually a sinister one.

Presently Gordon burned the strange note that had been put into his hand, together with its envelope, and then, passing into his bedroom, he leisurely dressed for dinner.

A dozen times the telephone bell rang, and Newton was kept busy answering anxious inquirers who had seen the accounts of his master’s illness in the evening papers.

Suddenly the man opened the door of Gordon’s room, and said:

“There’s Mr. Tulloch on the telephone, sir. He wishes to speak to you.”

“Tulloch!” echoed his master excitedly. Rushing to the instrument eagerly, he found that his enemy was at an office in the City.

“Come over at once and see me,” he urged. “I must speak with you without delay. Something serious has occurred.”

“All right,” replied Tulloch’s voice; “I’ll come immediately. I hope it’s nothing bad, Gordon—eh?”

“Come—and I’ll tell you all about it,” the young man said, and then returned to complete dressing.

He was all impatience until, twenty minutes later, Tulloch stood in the dimly-lit apartment and grasped the young man’s hand.

“What does all this mean—eh?” he asked. “I read it in the paper. What an infernal contretemps this afternoon!”

“Yes,” replied the other in a low voice as he sank upon one of the soft lounges. “But mine was not an illness, Tulloch. I fainted from—well, from fear.”

“From fear!” cried his friend in surprise. “Fear of what?”

Gordon explained in detail all that had occurred, adding: “I wish I had kept the note, but I very foolishly burned it only a few minutes before you rang up. I ought to have kept it for you to see.”

“It being in a child’s hand would not convey any clue as to who actually wrote it,” Tulloch remarked with a dark, thoughtful look as he slowly rubbed his chin. “The wording was evidently that of a foreigner.”

Well and smartly dressed, with a monocle dangling from a silk cord, and still wearing his overcoat, Tulloch presented the appearance of a prosperous City man as he lay back in the big saddle-bag chair, his legs stretched out towards the fire.

“Well,” Gordon exclaimed, “I want your opinion. How shall I act?”

The man before him did not reply. How much did he really know? Gordon wondered. From him no secret, however closely guarded, was ever safe; therefore he was hoping that by his aid he would be able to identify the person who had sent that mysterious warning coupled with threats.

“Somebody knows. That’s very evident,” Tulloch remarked at last.

“Do you think so?” gasped the unhappy young fellow. “Is my secret really out?” Or, flashed into Gordon’s mind, had Tulloch sent it himself?

“Well, I’m very much afraid that it seems so,” replied the elder man. “Have you no enemy whom you suspect?”

“I’ve been racking my brains to think, but cannot fix upon anyone.”

Tulloch looked across the dimly lit apartment at the young man’s agitated face.

“No rival for Maidee’s affections, for instance?”

“Many fellows are jealous of me, I expect,” replied Gordon. “Maidee is much admired and very popular, as you know. But I can think of no one likely to have discovered the truth—the truth as known to you and me,” he whispered.

“An enemy is not likely to show his hand—at least at present,” remarked Tulloch grimly. “It is certainly curious that your mysterious opponent should wish to hush up the affair. One would have thought that if he had ideas of secret vengeance he would have waited until the question had been answered, and then——”

“Yes, and then have spoken the truth,” Gordon said slowly. “He might have had a complete and terrible revenge if he had so wished. But you see I am fighting in the dark. I do not, unfortunately, know the identity of my enemy.”

A strange look crossed his visitor’s features, an expression which, in the dimness of that apartment, Gordon could not distinguish.

“Yes,” he agreed; “it is unfortunate—most unfortunate, my dear Cunningham. We fondly believed that our secret was quite safe, didn’t we?”

“I only dared to ask the question because you compelled me, Tulloch,” declared the unhappy man in despair. “And in acting boldly I have, alas! brought destruction upon myself.”

“Not destruction,” the other asserted. “The situation is certainly a trifle critical for you. But we must discover the identity of the person who thus utters threats. And having done that, we must form some counter-plot—to silence him. He must be silenced—at all hazards.”

“Can you really do that?” cried the young man eagerly. “I know your marvellous power of getting to know men’s secrets, Tulloch. Discover who this enemy of mine really is—and—and save me,” he implored.

“It might be done—if Maidee did not suspect,” the elder man said reflectively.

“But she doesn’t suspect now. I took your advice, and in acting boldly I have removed her suspicions.”

Again an evil shadow fell across Tulloch’s countenance.

“Very well,” he said. “I will see what I can do on your behalf. And yet—yet when last I was here you said some rather hard things of me, didn’t you?”

“No, no!” cried Gordon in quick eagerness. “Forget it all. Name your own price, Tulloch—but save me!”

The man’s face relaxed into a sinister grin of triumph, while his dark eyes shot a keen, inquisitive look at the unhappy man seated huddled before him. Gordon, driven to despair, was now ready—nay, anxious—to resume friendship with his visitor—the man who held him in his toils so utterly and so completely. The day of reckoning was near.

Little did he dream the actual truth. Indeed, if Tulloch had at that moment revealed the real, astounding facts to him he would have flatly refused to believe.

“Well,” said his visitor, “I will help you—but remember,” he added in a slow, meaning voice, “I am not a philanthropist.”

Gordon knew that he wanted money—as always. If he required his aid, then he must pay the price.

Ah! And what a price!

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE MARBLE FACE

THE early days of March.

The afternoon was dull and wintry, with a dispiriting greyness hanging over London.

Big Ben, high above, had just chimed, and the great bell had boomed forth three o’clock.

In Parliament Square, that little oasis of green grass in Westminster, the traffic of motor-’buses and taxi-cabs was increasing, and foot passengers, wrapped warmly against the east wind, hurried to and fro up Victoria Street, Whitehall, and over Westminster Bridge.

Within Westminster Abbey, in the grand old north transept—the entrance to which is in Parliament Square—all was hushed, gloomy and gradually darkening. The huge old pile stood mysterious and full of deep shadows on that grey, depressing, windy afternoon.

The noise of the traffic did not penetrate within those time-mellowed precincts, where the dim light struggled red, blue and orange through the magnificent rose-windows, showing the figures of the apostles in ancient glass. The high groined columns, the vaulted roof, and the dark, solemn interior, vast and gloomy, with its many splendid monuments and statues standing forth in relief, impressed the small crowd of sightseers which, year in, year out, are never absent from England’s most historic abbey.

In the Statesmen’s Corner—just as one enters from the hurry of Parliament Square—many visitors of various tongues came and went. They paused, conversing in whispers before the two rows of life-sized statues of the departed great; Gladstone, Beaconsfield, the Cannings, Pitt, Peel and the others, reflecting, admiring and remembering, for that, and Poets’ Corner in the south transept, opposite, are the two most sought-for spots by the hundreds of thousands of strangers who annually make a pilgrimage to Westminster.

The double row of illustrious British statesmen, each upon his circular pedestal, and each in characteristic attitude, stood silent, impressive, almost ghostly, in the gloom, while those who entered stood by, consulting their guide-books.

Surely no corner of our giant London, the hub of the hustling modern world, is so full of memories of the great—of the men who made the British Empire what it is to-day—than that spot, and on that afternoon one overheard expressions of admiration in a dozen tongues.

Of the many who passed by probably not one noticed, back in the deep shadow, just within the door, an elderly, ill-dressed and rather decrepit-looking man, white-haired and white-bearded, and wearing a shabby, snuff-coloured overcoat, who had paused to rest upon one of the old oak benches.

Unseen, he sat motionless, his pale face turned towards one of the high marble effigies—that of a statesman in the robes of a doctor of laws, a noble, handsome-looking man with prominent nose, rather high cheek-bones, his right hand across his breast, and his left at his side. It stood close to the statue of Gladstone, and its circular base bore in great bold, black letters the simple inscription:

ERECTED BY PARLIAMENT

To

The Right Honourable

The Earl of Ellersdale, K.G.,

Twice Prime Minister of England.

Born 1832. Died 1890.

With its back to one of the high, round Norman columns on the left, it stood out in strong relief, with a softly tempered light, shed from a long stained-glass window, revealing the clear-cut profile. The light from the window behind fell directly across it, bringing it into more prominence than the statues on either side, rendering the sculptor’s masterpiece an almost speaking effigy of the dead Premier as he had so frequently been seen in the House of Commons in the act of delivering one of his world-famous speeches.

The shabby old man sitting back in the shadow was well known to the black-gowned vergers. He haunted the precincts of the Abbey at all hours. Often he would remain there a whole day, wandering up and down the nave, or along the ancient cloisters. Sometimes he would wish them a whispered “good-day,” but generally, with his shabby old silk hat in his hand, he would shuffle on aimlessly, now and then sitting upon a bench to rest.

He would have no doubt been warned off as a suspicious character long ago had not the officials known him for years. They called him “Old Chestnut,” on account of the colour of the threadbare overcoat which he had worn summer and winter ever since his first appearance there. He was a trifle eccentric, they declared, like many of those strange characters who frequent our public buildings, and just as harmless as the little old woman in faded black shawl who came every morning for years and sat for one hour upon a certain bench in the south transept before the bust of Thackeray, her lips moving as though in prayer.

“Old Chestnut”—for nobody knew his real name—sometimes entered the Abbey as soon as it was opened to the public and did not leave till closing time, on such occasions surreptitiously consuming dry biscuits from his pocket. Now and then he would join parties of visitors and be conducted by one of the vergers, who explained the various historic portions of the Abbey. This he had done dozens of times, always giving the verger a tip, just like the rest of the sightseers.

On other occasions, apparently in order that the people should regard him as a stranger, he would carry a tattered Baedeker and pretend the greatest interest in all he investigated.

With the man who sold guides and post cards at the stall just outside the north door he was on terms of friendship, and would spend hours chatting with him. Indeed, on occasions he would keep an eye upon the stall if the vendor of guides had reason to absent himself.

Many theories had been put forward by the officials of the Abbey, from the Dean himself down to the sweepers, regarding the reason of the old man’s regular attendance there. As far as could be gathered, there was no special attraction for him in the silent, gloomy interior, save that he seemed to delight in wandering among the monuments of the illustrious dead, at the same time watching the constant stream of the living.

That afternoon as he sat back in the shadow resting, one of the vergers nodded across to him, and he returned the salute with a quiet smile, as though gratified by the recognition. Ever since early morning he had been wandering about, and was now resting in Statesmen’s Corner with the monument to the great Lord Ellersdale straight before him, his eyes half-closed, his thin, clasped hands resting upon his cherry stick, his old silk hat placed carefully at his side.

In the gloom of the great nave the dark figure of a tall man halted and stood watching him, unseen—a thin man with a yellow face—Don Mario.

Only for a moment he watched, then, apparently satisfied, he turned upon his heel and walked out, like an evil shadow, a strange, sinister smile upon his hard features.

Though half asleep, “Old Chestnut” was nevertheless watching with keen interest a party of American women, some of whom wore blue veils, being conducted around by a guide.

“The Statesmen’s Corner,” the man was saying in his parrot-like way; “here are buried the greatest of England’s statesmen during the past two centuries. Gladstone and Beaconsfield you see stand side by side with that smaller monument between them; the Cannings in a group, and that, yonder, is Ellersdale, and is declared by critics to be the finest piece of sculpture of the whole. Perhaps it is owing to its better position, with a better light, that it is the more noticeable—but in any case it is a fitting monument to the great statesman who, in more than one serious crisis, was the saviour of his country.”

“He was a fine man, and always a good friend of the United States, anyway,” declared one of the women, and then the party moved across to the south transept—to Poets’ Corner.

The old man’s eyes followed the party, and an amused expression crossed his white face.

The quaint opinions of American tourists often caused him to smile. Sometimes the ignorance of English history displayed by questioners was utterly amazing, and many most extraordinary questions had he overheard in the course of his long years of idling within those time-mellowed, historic precincts. Sometimes—in order to kill the hours, it seemed—he would explain things to a party of country cousins—working people who could not afford to pay the fee for a guide. He knew the Abbey as well as the vergers themselves, and certainly when he spoke it was evident that he possessed a deep and profound knowledge of its history and antiquities.

The party of Americans passed away into the gloom, and the corner where he sat again became silent and deserted. That was no unusual thing. Sightseers usually came in batches. If one person paused before a monument, then another would be attracted to the same spot, and another and another, and so on.

Big Ben had just rung out the notes of the quarter, and so dark had it now become that the electric lights had been switched on in the more remote parts of the nave, the little lamps glowing like stars in the vast, black void of the great interior.

Of a sudden the door close to where the old man was seated opened, and two figures entered from Parliament Square—a man in a dark overcoat, accompanied by a slim, well-dressed young girl in black, wearing a large hat, a long sealskin coat and a veil.

“It is just here,” exclaimed the man briskly, as they passed by where “Old Chestnut” was seated. “See, at the corner—the one standing out there in the light.”

And both walked straight on towards the statue of the dead Premier, the man conversing with his companion in low, hushed whispers.

The man concealed in the shadow regarded them idly, but suddenly it seemed as though in their backs he recognised something familiar, for he bent forward, half rising from his seat, eager and uncertain.

The pair had halted before the statue of the Earl of Ellersdale, and the girl was bending forward as she read the inscription. Then, looking up at it, she stood for a few moments quite motionless.

The man was speaking—whispering rapid questions into her ear. But she neither responded, nor did she move. It seemed as though the marble features of the illustrious deceased held her in strange fascination.

Both their backs were turned to the silent, unseen watcher, and at that distance, in the falling gloom, it had become difficult to distinguish detail.

He saw, however, that the man placed his hand upon the girl’s arm, and pointing upwards, asked her something. She replied, whereupon the man slowly nodded.

Then the girl, suddenly turning her face from the lifelike sculptured features, addressed some quick questions to her companion, to which he made reply.

The old man, even at that distance, could overhear their whispering.

For a few moments the pair stood, their backs still turned, both their faces raised in eagerness to the marble effigy, standing forth white and ghostly in the dim, religious twilight.

The man’s gloved hand was raised, and he spoke to the girl, as though he were pointing out the marvellous handiwork of the most famous sculptor of the day. She whispered rapidly, moving further forward to obtain a better view of the profile of the marble features.

Then he raised his hand again as, side by side, they stood in apparent amazement.

The quick action of “Old Chestnut” at that moment was curious. He had swiftly withdrawn deeper into the shadow beside the door, back into a niche near an old sixteenth century tomb, where he hoped to escape observation.

Sight of the strangers had startled him. His thin lips were pressed together as he stood staring at them, almost terrified, for they had both turned to retrace their steps slowly to the door. Then he turned his back, and became interested in the crumbling old tomb.

His suspicions had become confirmed. He stood aghast.

The serious, earnest girl who had been there to inspect the statue of the late Earl of Ellersdale so closely was none other than Maidee Lambton, while her companion was Detective-Inspector Medland!

The pair, walking together and conversing in low whispers, passed close by the pale-faced, anxious old man who, in the gloom, had his back still turned to them, and then went out again into the noise and bustle of Parliament Square.

And the weird and silent watcher, gazing at the closed door after they had disappeared, stood with a look of abject terror upon his white, haggard countenance.

“Then my secret is out!” he whispered hoarsely to himself. “They know the truth!”

CHAPTER XIX.

MORE ABOUT JOHN AMBROSE

JUST after seven o’clock that evening the man Tulloch reappeared unexpectedly at Bruton Street.

He had been down at Brighton for the past few days, he told Gordon, as he stood with him in that dim Oriental room. He had telephoned to him at the House, and the young man had rushed home in a taxi in order to meet him.

“Well?” he inquired, “have you discovered anything, Tulloch?”

“Not yet.”

Gordon sighed disappointedly. This man of secrets constantly appeared and disappeared, yet his story was ever the same. He could discover nothing concerning the strange threat—or its author.

“Every day increases my peril, Tulloch,” declared the young man, glancing to see if the door were closed. “Only last night Maidee was asking me why, now that I am well again, I do not put the question in the House.”

“Don’t,” urged his visitor, glancing at him narrowly. “I somehow don’t like that mysterious note you received. Whoever wrote it means mischief.”

“Neither do I. We’re fighting in the dark.”

“That’s just it,” remarked Tulloch. “And another contretemps has happened. Yesterday, while walking along the King’s Road at Brighton, I met a man who recognised me. Like you—he believed me to be dead. My appearance caused him a terrible shock, I can tell you. And——”

“And what?”

“Well. There are reasons, Gordon, why I should leave the country at once. I expect by this time he has gone to the police, and told them an amazing story of a dead man being alive.”

“Leave the country—and leave me?” gasped the young man in dismay.

“I’m sorry that I must. I’m compelled to go as soon as ever I can, for——well, the fact is, the little affair is so serious that I’m unable to stay and face the music. Therefore I shall go back again—to my tomb in Italy.”

“But without you, Tulloch, I can do nothing. Ruin—nay, death—stares me in the face! Somebody knows my secret, and must be silenced—by fair means or by foul.”

The elder man, smart and spruce as usual, slowly nodded. Then he said:

“To save myself I must fly. As you know, I haven’t exactly a clean sheet,” he laughed a trifle nervously. “I sailed near the wind in the city once or twice, and some people haven’t forgotten it.”

“And how do you manage to live now, Tulloch?” asked his friend.

“Well,” he hesitated, “in a certain set on the Continent there are various ways of earning a living which, if not exactly honest, are scarcely criminal. One meets many pigeons to pluck in Paris, Vienna, or Rome.”

“Ah! The old game, then?”

“Yes; cards chiefly. I, and a friend of mine—a woman—make a neat little coup now and then. It is a safe game providing the police haven’t your photo, and you are not in the gallery of photographs published in the Rats d’Hôtel. But once be arrested for sharp practice with cards, and your picture is taken and circulated to all hotels by that infernal international system they have nowadays, and, of course, the game is up. I was nearly caught in Carlsbad last season through being a trifle careless. I had to submit to heavy blackmail, and pay up nearly every farthing I possessed.”

“Yours is not exactly an exemplary life, Tulloch, is it?” remarked Gordon. “Have a cigar?”

The other man took the weed offered him and lit it, while the young man, lying back upon a lounge, wondered how he should act.

“I’ve half a mind to come abroad with you,” he said.

“My dear fellow, you’d better not. Remember what you are—and what I am. A secret friendship is all very well, but you couldn’t go about openly with me. Besides, I should have attention directed towards me, and, in all probability, find myself arrested. No. You must keep clear of me, at all costs.”

“Well, Tulloch, what shall I do?” asked the young man. “Suggest something.”

“I could suggest lots, if it were not for Maidee. She’s the most difficult problem,” said Tulloch. “While you don’t put that question she will still remain suspicious that you are in possession of some facts which ought to be revealed.”

“You compelled me to put the query to the Home Secretary.”

“Yes, I did. I admit that I made a great mistake. Yet had you not put the question, the consequences might have been much worse,” he said slowly.

“How?” asked Cunningham instantly. “I don’t follow you.”

“I merely say that by putting the question you misled certain other people who were ready to think evil of you, Gordon. So congratulate yourself that, though I might have acted foolishly in compelling you to demand the truth from Scotland Yard, yet by so doing you saved yourself.”

“But I have not saved myself. Remember that threat!” he cried.

“While you do not repeat the question, the mysterious person who threatened will say nothing.”

“Why?”

“Ah! that I can’t tell, my dear fellow. It is the motive I’ve been trying to discover. If I found that, the rest would be quite easy. The worst is, however, that I have to clear out of the country in order to save myself.”

“When do you go?”

“As soon as ever I can. If there is any inquiry for me after I have gone tell Newton not to admit that I have ever visited you. I am dead as far as you know—understand?”

“Quite,” replied Gordon, with failing heart. While he had this clever, unscrupulous man at his side he somehow felt protected from his enemies. But now he would be left to fight alone.

Tulloch had not sat down, for he was in a hurry. He stood near the fire, smoking the excellent cigar, his eyes fixed upon the young man before him.

Then at last he put forth his hand, saying:

“Well, my dear boy, I must wish you au revoir. When the coast is clear I shall turn up again—never fear.”

“I may be dead,” remarked Gordon in a half-whisper.

“Dead—rot!”

“I can’t endure this suspense much longer, Tulloch,” he said in a low, hoarse voice. “You say Maidee suspects?”

“Pair, and go abroad for a month or so. Plead illness, and you’ll get a respite from Maidee. Act with caution, and at the same time remain bold. Don’t go about wearing that wretched, worried look. It will give you away, if you’re not careful. Chin-chin, my boy—and the best of good luck.”

Then he gripped the young man’s hand, and went forth, leaving him seated motionless in despair.

As he passed from Bruton Street into Piccadilly Don Mario Mellini joined him, and together they walked westward along by the park railings, deep in earnest conversation.

At nine o’clock Maidee, pleading a headache, had gone to her room, but instead of retiring had hastily exchanged her black dinner gown for a dark stuff dress, and was in the act of tying her veil, prior to going forth upon one of those clandestine excursions to “Uncle John,” when Rayner, her discreet maid, knocked lightly and entered with a note.

Without Rayner’s help she could never escape on these little expeditions, for the young woman, who had been four years in her service, was always loyal to her young mistress.

“This has just come by boy messenger, miss,” she said, as she handed Maidee the note. “He said there was no answer.”

The girl took it, and in an instant recognised the handwriting of the superscription.

Tearing it open with trembling fingers, she read it, and then stood aghast. Her hands fell limply by her side, and she stared straight before her.

“I hope nothing is wrong, miss,” the maid said, alarmed at the sudden change in her.

“Oh, no! Rayner,” Maidee managed to say, “nothing at all—at least really nothing,” and she tried to smile. But it was a sorry attempt. The news had utterly crushed her.

She had just been about to go to Uncle John and put to him a few pointed questions—questions arising out of certain strange things which Medland had told her that afternoon—when this note informed her that he had been suddenly called away into the country for a short time.

“I will let you know where I am as soon as I have a permanent address,” he wrote. “In the meantime be wary and watchful. Remember our compact. Acting together, we must discover the truth. Though absent, I shall have constant news of you through a third party. All good wishes, and hoping soon to see you again.—Your Uncle John.”

When the maid had gone out to attend to Lady Ravenscourt, the girl sank into a chair and sat wondering.

She had been anxious to put some curious questions to the old man. Yet at the very moment when she was about to visit him he had been called away.

He did not say where he was going. That was very unlike him, for whenever he moved his abode—which was very frequently—he always sent her, in secret, his new address. During the past few years he had lived in many parts of London, including Fulham, Battersea, Notting Hill, Hackney, Westbourne Park, Acton, Kew, Hammersmith, Camberwell and Peckham. He constantly changed his habitation, for no apparent reason other than that he was in the habit of contracting a violent dislike of his landlady.

That day had, indeed, been an eventful one for Maidee. What the detective had hinted had astounded her. Again her suspicions had been aroused, and at eight o’clock she had telephoned to Gordon to call at once as she wished to consult him. But Newton replied that his master had left for Reading, where he had to deliver a political speech that evening.

As for old John Ambrose, he returned from Bruton Street about half-past seven to his lodgings, and, having ascertained that his landlady was in the basement, he slipped in unobserved by means of his latchkey. Standing before the glass over-mantel in the shabby sitting-room, he rapidly transformed his features by removing various marks and adding others. Then he threw off his overcoat, and, ascending to his bedroom, exchanged his clothes for a suit of dark blue serge, the pea-jacket of which gave him almost a nautical appearance.

As the reader may have guessed, it was he who, decrepit and shabby, had lingered in Westminster Abbey for so many hours—he who was known to the vergers as “Old Chestnut.”

About six o’clock he had returned, and entering unobserved by the front door, as was his habit, he had exchanged his clothes, and, in a few minutes had gone forth again as Mr. Tulloch. His change of garb never troubled him much, for the majority of landladies put his various modes of dress down to his eccentricity. When they became curious he simply moved to other apartments.

In that one day he had played three rôles, and played them with such success that, as in his narrow bedroom he once again became John Ambrose, he chuckled to himself in triumph.

“It was fortunate that I went to the Abbey to-day—very fortunate. Or I might have remained here and have been faced by the girl—which would have been decidedly awkward!”

Then, with a self-satisfied grin upon his face, the crafty old fellow busied himself in gathering up his small belongings and throwing them into an old and battered travelling trunk. From his sitting-room he got an armful of books and other things, and carried them upstairs, afterwards carefully collecting his various clothes, which he placed on top, and locked the lid.

Then he wrote upon a luggage label, “John Ambrose, Totnes Station, G.W.R. To be called for,” and tied it upon the handle.

Into a small handbag he placed his false white beard, his spectacles, and a few other mysteries of his disguises, while from beneath the carpet in his bedroom, near the window, he took a flat envelope filled with English banknotes.

Then he descended to his sitting-room, called his landlady, paid her a month’s rent, which greatly pleased the good woman, and asked her to give the box over to a railway carman on the morrow.

“I’m called away on business suddenly,” he explained to her. “I only knew an hour ago. Probably I shall be back in April, and if so I shall return to you.”

“I’ll be most pleased, sir,” declared the woman, for if old Mr. Ambrose was eccentric, he was nevertheless always a good payer.

When she had gone he paced the room several times. There was nothing more to be done. He had already written to Maidee. He had only now to make good his escape.

So, shouting farewell to the woman, who had returned to the regions below, he put on a thick, dark grey ulster and left the house with his handbag, and walking to the corner of the street, he hailed a passing cab, in which he drove away rapidly.

In the cab he adjusted the white beard, and put on his glasses, by which he became absolutely transformed.

“A few hours!” he exclaimed, speaking to himself, “will carry me into safety. I’ve had a narrow squeak of it—a devilish narrow squeak. And even now it will require all my wits if I am to avoid exposure. But, for the present, I am surely quite safe.”

And he laughed again in complete satisfaction.

He, however, was in ignorance that ever since seven o’clock, in that deep doorway opposite the house wherein he lodged, the dark figure of a man had been lurking, wary and vigilant, as he had watched before, or that on his emerging the figure had stolen swiftly, with evil in his deep-set eyes, after him and entered a taxi-cab waiting round the corner.

And that taxi was now slowly following the cab in which the fugitive sat.

CHAPTER XX.

REVEALS TREACHERY

HAVING crossed Westminster Bridge and traversed Victoria Street, the cab halted at the Brighton Station at Victoria, where old Ambrose alighted, his small bag in hand.

Hardly had he paid the driver when a taxi drew up a little distance away, and a thin, wiry, elderly man, with deep-set eyes and a yellow complexion, and dressed in dark clothes, got out and walked into the booking-hall, closely following John Ambrose. It was Don Mario Mellini—the friend of the dead Richard Goodrick.

Ambrose went to the booking-office and obtained a second-class ticket to Hayward’s Heath. Afterwards he made inquiry regarding the trains, and finding he had half an hour to wait, he bought an evening paper and leisurely read it.

At some distance away the man who was watching while pretending to be interested in the bookstall, kept his quarry under strict observation, having already ascertained which train he was about to take and his destination. As usual, there was much noise, bustle and confusion, for trains were arriving and departing every few minutes, and, in order to avoid the stream of people, old Ambrose moved further towards the refreshment room.

Of a sudden he apparently made up his mind to enter there and wait, so he turned and disappeared within the door.

Swift as lightning the mysterious watcher hurried across and looked into the bar. But he was not there!

The man entered and looked around, utterly confounded.

Not until a few minutes later did he realise that the cunning old gentleman had played a trick upon him. He had entered the next door, leading into the Grosvenor Hotel, passed through the hall and out into the darkness of the Grosvenor Road.

Ere the man who had been keeping such strict observation could realise the truth, the old fellow had crossed the road and was lost in the night.

Not before three minutes had elapsed did the priest enter the hotel breathlessly and make inquiry of the hall-porter.

“Yes,” replied the latter, “an old gentleman walked through a minute or two ago. He isn’t stopping at the hotel, I think.”

“Perhaps he took a cab outside,” said the yellow-faced man.

But the outside porter declared that he had not. The old fellow, carrying his bag, had simply walked out in the direction of Buckingham Palace Road.

The priest was beside himself with chagrin, for the action of Ambrose told him that he had suspected the presence of a watcher. For half an hour he continued to make inquiries, and he was present when the train left for Hayward’s Heath.

When it moved out without the old man, he cried aloud in Italian:

“Madonna mia! I ought to have known that it was only a ruse—that the old blackguard is as artful as Satan himself!”

Truth to tell, however, old Ambrose was quite unaware of being watched. He had simply adopted that course in order that, if anybody should discover him, he would be put off the scent. He was far too wary to go straight into hiding, and thus leave a trail behind.

So he had just slipped through the hotel and down the steps. Then crossing the road swiftly, he had gone up Ebury Street, and, walking until he found a taxi, had driven to Liverpool Street Station, arriving there at about a quarter to nine.

There he bought a first-class ticket to Brussels, and, entering the Continental train, got safely away down to Parkeston.

The night was dark and wet, with the wind howling dismally, when he, with a small crowd of fellow-passengers, stepped upon the quay and made off towards the Antwerp boat, lying alongside, with the Hook of Holland boat a little farther up.

One by one the passengers for the Continent went up the gangway, and Ambrose, without fear of recognition, gained the steamer’s deck, and at once sought the steward to arrange for a berth.

He was unaware that a dark-eyed man, dressed in semi-nautical uniform, standing near the gangway, was watching, as he does every night, each departing passenger as he or she came up from the quay beneath the glare of the electric lamp on deck. And he, the port-watcher of the police, suddenly became interested in the old fellow. He left his coign of vantage, and strolling across the deck, managed to get a good look at his prominent, clean-shaven features.

“Isn’t old enough,” he remarked to himself; “and yet the description tallies.”

Then he turned and made his way ashore quickly and to the telephone. Without much delay he was on to London, asking for instructions. But what he received was apparently not very definite, for presently he hung up the receiver, and on coming out of the telephone-box, walked across to his own little office, which he unlocked. Then, switching on the light, he drew out a large photograph album, in which were preserved portraits of many hundreds of persons who had absconded and were wanted by the police in various towns in England for all sorts of offences, from the non-payment of income-tax to murder.

He ran rapidly through them, but found nothing which tallied with the person he suspected.

For a few moments he stood puzzled. Outside, the mails and luggage were being carried on board, and in ten minutes the steamer would leave.

So again he returned on board and obtained another good look at the fugitive, who, however, displayed no sign of anxiety. Indeed, he was standing in the saloon taking a glass of whisky and soda and changing a five-pound note with the steward into Belgian money.

Being winter, and bad weather in the North Sea, there were few passengers.

The detective went up to the steward and ordered a drink. Then, while taking it, he remarked to Ambrose:

“Rather rough night outside, I’m afraid.”

“I believe so,” replied the old man, speaking with a very pronounced Italian accent. “But these steamers are very good sea-boats.”

The man in semi-nautical attire drained his glass, and wishing the traveller good-night, ascended to the deck again, cursing himself as a fool.

“The man wanted is an Englishman—whereas he is a foreigner,” he said aloud to himself as he walked towards the gangway. “And yet there is a likeness, I’m sure—a very striking likeness. I recollect now that I left the photograph in my other pocket at home. I was wearing my grey coat this morning when I received it from London.”

He stood on deck undecided. There was no time for him to go to his home over in Harwich. Again, the fact that the man he suspected was a foreigner was not convincing.

The siren shrieked, announcing the sailing of the ship. Porters and others going ashore were returning, and the men were ready to withdraw the gangway and cast off.

He was half inclined to remain and cross to Antwerp. But the thought that the man was undoubtedly an Italian decided him, so just as the gangway was withdrawn he slipped lightly across it and returned ashore, little dreaming that from behind one of the funnels a pair of shrewd eyes were watching him—the eyes of the wary fugitive.

Next morning John Ambrose, his old self, with patriarchal white beard, and wearing heavy-rimmed glasses and minus his bag, alighted from a cab before the Grand Hotel in Brussels, and at the bureau asked for the room reserved for Mr. Grieg, of Glasgow. He was at once shown to one on the second floor, to which, a few moments later, a well-worn leather trunk, bearing the initials “J.F.G.,” was brought in, having arrived from a luggage depository an hour before, and presently a page brought up a letter which had been awaiting his arrival several days.

Unlocking the trunk, the old fellow took out a fresh and rather smart suit, consisting of black morning coat and grey check trousers, as well as a soft grey hat, and quickly he changed his dress. Thus was his shabbiness transformed into smartness, all being completely in keeping with his gold albert and diamond ring.

Presently he descended and passed out to take a stroll along the busy boulevard as far as the Bourse, and afterwards up the Montagne de la Cour, where he idled, looking into shops and gazing through his monocle at the smart ladies out shopping.

During his absence, however, a little, undersized, ferret-eyed man of typical Belgian aspect, and somewhat seedily dressed, entered the big hotel, and, passing into the bureau, asked in French:

“Has there arrived to-day a thin-faced, clean-shaven Englishman, whose only luggage was a little brown leather bag? His name is Ambrose, and he is from London.”

“I regret, m’sieur,” replied the clerk politely, for he knew the inquirer, “but we have nobody of that name. We have had several English arrivals to-day, but nobody corresponding to the description.”

“No Englishman with a small brown bag—eh?” inquired the detective, adding: “The English police are very anxious that he should be detained upon a serious charge.” And then he gave a further and more detailed description, reading from the telegram of inquiry received at the Central Bureau of Police that morning from Scotland Yard.

The truth was, that the detective at Parkeston, on returning home to Harwich, had looked at the photograph, and becoming convinced that the wanted man had actually sailed, he again telephoned to London, and Scotland Yard had, in turn, lost no time in communicating with the Belgian Police.

“We have a Monsieur Grieg from Glasgow,” replied the chef de réception, “an old man with a full white beard, like King Leopold’s, and wearing a monocle. He walks with a slight limp, leaning heavily upon his stick.”

“Did he pretend to be an Italian?”

“Not in the least. He spoke in English. His luggage and letters were awaiting him.”

“Had he previously engaged a room?”

“Certainly.”

“And he has a beard, and is lame—eh?”

“Yes.”

“Ah! Then I fear it cannot be the individual for whom the London police are searching,” replied the undersized Belgian.

“Look!” whispered the clerk in French; “see over there! That is he!”

And he indicated the fugitive leaning heavily upon his stick, though well dressed and very prosperous-looking.

“No, no,” exclaimed the detective. “It can’t be the person. He is described in this despatch as clean-shaven, decrepit, rather slovenly in attire, often affects to be an Italian, is in possession of funds, and is fond of purchasing curios.”

“No,” declared the hotel clerk, looking across the vestibule at the inoffensive and highly respectable old man who, leaning upon his stick, was making his way towards the lift. “That is most certainly not the man you are seeking, mon cher ami. He has probably gone to some other hotel. He is not with us.”

“No doubt,” the detective replied. “Not a single point in the description corresponds. Height, size, face, clothes, gait, manner—everything differs. Bah! those English police are droll fellows!”

And then the detective laughed, and soon afterwards raised his hat to the clerk in the bureau and left.

Such a past-master was old John Ambrose in the art of disguise that he was passing unsuspected beneath the very eyes of the watchful police. A man of marvellous memory, of exquisite tact and of deep cunning, he was at one hour kind, sympathetic, and tender-hearted as a child—at another hard, bitter, unscrupulous—even criminal—a man of strange, complex nature, who seemed to possess the power of completely changing his facial expression at will.

That same night, just before ten o’clock, while Ambrose was secure in Brussels, Maidee Lambton was standing before the mirror in her room preparing to slip out in secret. Her suspicions being again aroused, she was nervous and anxious, and had resolved to watch Gordon’s movements after he left the House that night.

Lady Ravenscourt had already retired, and Mrs. Beresford was reading a novel in the drawing-room; therefore, with the assistance of the faithful Rayner, her absence was not very difficult to arrange.

The maid, with her dark, smooth hair and white apron, stood beside Maidee as she was in the act of pinning on her neat black hat, when suddenly, in trying to fix it firmly, one of the long pins accidentally grazed the top of her head.

It was no unusual occurrence, therefore she took no notice of it until, a few moments later, as she was pulling on her long suède gloves, she exclaimed:

“Oh, Rayner! I—I do feel so faint—so queer! I—I wonder what’s the matter with me!”

“You do look pale, miss!” cried the girl in alarm. “I’ll get the smelling-salts from the dressing-room.”

Next second, however, Rayner saw that her mistress had become short of breath. She was gasping. Her hand clutched at her breast, and she reeled sidelong against the big, handsome dressing-table, while the maid just succeeded in preventing her falling to the floor.

“I can’t make it out!” her mistress gasped, her eyes staring from her head wildly, her jaws seeming as though they had become fixed. “Why—ah!—I—I can hardly move my mouth! It was that scratch! It burns like fire!”

Rayner, too alarmed to make any comment, took up the two other silver hatpins lying upon the tray on the dressing-table, and saw, to her great surprise, that upon both there had been smeared some dark brown substance that had now dried.

“Why—what’s that?” shrieked Maidee, her quick eyes detecting it. “What’s that on my hatpins? Some stuff has been placed upon them purposely. Ah! I see it all! Heaven help me—I—I’ve been poisoned!”

Next second the poor girl, haggard and terrified, tetanic convulsions showing at her white jaws, collapsed senseless into her maid’s arms.

Thus had a secret enemy triumphed!

CHAPTER XXI.

DON MARIO AT HOME

THE sunny April afternoon was warm and drowsy in the high-up, ancient rock-village of Santa Lucia which, perched upon the summit of a conical hill, commands a magnificent view of the high purple Apennines on the one hand, while on the other lies the broad Lake of Bolsena, like a mirror in the sun, and beyond the great fertile plain stretches away to the hazy horizon a white road running across it like a ribbon—the ancient Via Cassia, the road to Rome.

Long ago, when the world was young, the place was an important centre, and strongly fortified, as the grass-grown ruins of its cyclopean walls and the round massive tower of its castello still mutely show. Eretum was the name by which it was known to the Etruscans—the Romans called it Sulmo, and in the eleventh century, when the church with its high, square, inartistic tower was built, it was renamed Santa Lucia.

It is a village to which no traveller, save perhaps a stray motorist, ever comes, far removed from the railway, lying midway between the Mediterranean and the Apennines, fanned by the cool mountain winds in summer and fresh in all seasons by breezes from the sea.

Like many another dwindling and obscure village in Central Italy, it bears a bad reputation. Its people are not friendly towards the stranger. Indeed, over the surface of the steep road which comes up from the plain and over the hills to Siena the contadini have placed six inches of gravel, rendering it impassable to motor-cars, and obliging motorists to hire bulls to draw them up the steep incline. Those who refuse to submit to blackmail are stoned, and many a motorist has returned to the Eternal City with his car badly damaged and his wind-screen smashed by the hostile villagers.

Hence, nowadays, motorists, who might bring prosperity to the little inn, the Gran’ Duca, give the place a wide berth.

Viewed from the plain it is most picturesque, the high, square church-tower rising above the cluster of red roofs and white houses. But on nearer acquaintance its ill-paved streets, where fowls run at will, are very narrow and tortuous; the ancient houses, high and prison-like, are huddled together as was the custom in ancient days, for protection against the Saracens. In the little piazza the grass grows over the stones, and there is everywhere signs of poverty and decay.

Mighty in the days of the Papacy, Santa Lucia has now shrunk to a mere miserable relic of its former self, a place wherein scarce any man knows anything but of the few men and women who make their dwelling there, sons of the soil who spring from its dust and return to it.

Yet they have earned for themselves a reputation of being a bad people. They were feared in the days of the Papacy; they gave shelter to the brigands of the Maremma until the last of them were killed ten years ago, and even to-day the carabineers never ascend there unless called, and then they go in force. The usual patrol, consisting of a pair, refuse to enter the village. More than one has been shot from a window and the assassin remained unknown. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Italian Automobile Club issue an urgent warning to motorists to avoid the place.

To this poverty-stricken village, fifteen years before, its hook-nosed parish priest, or curato, Don Mario Mellini, had been sent from Milan as chastisement for his too sceptical and inquiring mind. By long, weary years in that solitude, and among that brutal, uncouth people he had become chastened; the fire had died out of his soul and the light out of his eyes.

The small white presbytery with the iron-barred windows stood in the deserted little piazza where the lizards darted over the moss-grown stones. Next it was the church, the stucco of which was peeling from the old red bricks, while from the open door, disclosing a dark interior with candles burning in the gloom, there issued the sweet fragrance of incense.

In a bare room with stone floor, uncomfortable old rush-bottomed chairs, a tiny shrine before which a light burned in a red glass, and a crucifix upon the whitewashed wall—a room which opened upon a small courtyard shaded by trailing vines and adorned by bits of broken statuary—sat the thin old priest in rusty black cassock and black biretta, lazily smoking his long Tuscan cigar after luncheon.

Upon the table there still stood a big rush-covered fiasca of good red Chianti and a couple of long glasses, while opposite, in a chair drawn near the open door, sat John Ambrose.

Don Mario had just blown out the candle by which he had lit his long thin cigar, as is the Italian habit, and as he did so glanced across at his visitor, who sat drowsy and dozing.

The old curato, or rather piovano was his actual title, was tall and stately, but his clean-shaven face was thin and drawn for want of good food, his eyes were dark and brilliant, impenetrable wells of thought, his finely-cut lips smiled but rarely, and had upon them always an expression of bitterness, while his complexion was yellow, like old marble.

His was a cure of souls which covered many miles, but counted few persons.

Below those great ruined walls of Santa Lucia nearly all the land lay untilled, and within them the few wretched, half-starved people, fierce in their antagonism towards the rich and against all forms of law or government, dragged out a poverty-stricken existence, forgotten by all save the tax-collector.

And for fifteen years, with many short vacations, Don Mario had lived, a cultured scholar among the barbarians. In Milan he had preached in the great Duomo and been popular. In London, in Turin and Genoa his fame was known, and the women had crowded to hear his marvellous discourses, and even in St. Peter’s itself had his clear voice sounded. He would have been a great prelate, perhaps even a Cardinal, but, being a reformer, the Vatican would have none of him; therefore, like many another brilliant cleric, he had been crushed, broken and banished to that lonely village of bad repute.

Late one night, a fortnight before, the Signor Inglese had arrived at Santa Lucia in the dusty, ramshackle old carrozzella in which Don Mario had driven twenty miles to meet him at the wayside station. He was a foreigner, and would have fared badly had he not been under the protection of the Signor Piovano. At first the low-browed, sunburnt men, some of whom were in sheepskins, scowled at him darkly as he passed, but already he had chatted with some of them, and they had therefore admitted him into their midst, even though they were not altogether satisfied because of his inordinate inquisitiveness and his constant poking about the old ruins of the castello and elsewhere.

Old Teresa, a bent, grey-haired old crone, the donna di casa, who looked after the priest’s domestic affairs, hobbled across the courtyard, arousing the Englishman from his drowsiness.

“This place, Santa Lucia, has a bad name,” the priest was remarking to his guest. “Its people have earned it; they are mostly Anarchists and law-breakers, some murderers who snap their fingers at the carabinieri! Why? Who has made them Anarchists but the adventurers who have lately been in power at Monte Citorio! They legislate for themselves, put money into their pockets, in the shape of fat commissions, and drive the contadini to Anarchism, or else compel them to emigrate. Already poor Italy has lost her backbone, her youth and her energy. The condition of Santa Lucia is the condition of all our remote villages. Ah! if the English only knew our dear unfortunate Italy as she is, and would not look out upon her through the windows of the grand hotels, I fear the charm she is supposed to possess would soon be dispelled. Surely no peasantry in all Europe is so oppressed, so hopeless, so famished, so despairing as our once light-hearted people, the honest, easygoing men and women who, for the past ten years, have been driven to desperation and to Anarchism—nay, to death—by unfair taxation, the glorification of the signore, the lack of justice in the courts, and the bribery and corruption on every hand.”

“Pray be careful, Mario,” remarked his friend, glancing at the door. “Some official may overhear you. Surely such sentiments had better remain unuttered, for it would fare ill with you if your words were reported to Rome.”

“Probably it would, my dear Ambrose,” laughed the old priest. “But I only speak what I feel. Though this place is wretched, poverty-stricken, and barbaric, yet I have the welfare of my people at heart. They are not half as black as they are painted. Here, a word is quickly followed by a knife-thrust, and jealousy is often responsible for a secret stab in the dark. Quick, hot-headed, hot-tempered, they are swift to take offence or execute vendetta, and so strange are their religious convictions that I have actually known men pray before the wayside Madonna that the theft they were about to commit might be successful, and remain undiscovered!”

Ambrose smiled.

“And you, my dear Mario, are trying to teach them different!” he said. “A hard task, I should fancy, with such a people.”

Don Mario sighed sadly, then, tapping his big horn snuff-box, he opened it and took a pinch. His white collar was soiled, his cassock was greasy, and down its many-buttoned front were the marks of many of old Teresa’s soups, her stews and her minestras. Upon his chin was a three days’ growth of beard. He was passing from neglect into oblivion, for now that the Sacred College was against him, no one at the Vatican dared to speak in his favour.

Only on the previous night, as he sat chatting with his guest beneath the oil lamp, he had declared with a bitter laugh that he was as forgotten as a folio upon a library shelf, and that nowadays his only object in life was to gabble through the ritual twice a day in the big, gloomy church, heedless whether anybody were present or not.

Once he had had pious women of rank pleading at Rome for him, and magnates soliciting his preferment. Once he was fêted in the big cities, women hung upon his words, and crowds jostled in the great cathedrals to hear his remarkable and scholarly discourses.

But that was all of the past. Instead of becoming an archbishop he was merely Don Mario Mellini, piovano, or parish priest of Santa Lucia, an obscure rock-village.

He rose, and, opening the rickety old persiennes, let light and air into the bare room. Then he took from a drawer in a side table a small roll of ancient brown parchments—musty manuscripts of the Middle Ages, closely written in Latin with many contractions, and sat down to study them with the aid of a big lens.

As with many priests in Italy, his hobby was the study of palæography. From the old Franciscan monastery of Radicofani, across the valley, he obtained many of the documents on loan, and spent hours, weeks, nay, years, in poring over them, deciphering them, and from them gaining a knowledge of local history and customs.

It was his only pleasure—the only pastime allowed him—the only pursuit which caused him to forget the brilliant past.

Through the open door came the hum of the insects and the constant crick of the cicale, that harbinger of heat which the dweller in Italy knows so well. And as he unrolled one of the half faded parchment rolls and began to pore over it with his lens and slowly transcribe it from the abbreviated Latin into modern Italian, his guest sat regarding him in silence.

A secret existed between the pair—one of the strangest and most remarkable of the many secrets in this modern world of ours—a secret of which neither ever spoke. They always kept a mutual silence upon the point.

CHAPTER XXII.

CONTAINS AN ADMISSION

THROUGH many years John Ambrose had placed implicit faith in that solemn, pious, hook-nosed curato, the man who was such a brilliant scholar and such a wonderful orator that the Sacred College had feared his influence and therefore crushed him.

His leanings towards the Government, his support of certain decisions in the Chamber of Deputies, his friendship with Crispi and Tittoni, and his differences with the Archbishop of Siena had all been seized upon by the Cardinals, who had foreseen his national popularity. Hence he had been banished to that high-up, obscure village where the Government stipend was the princely sum of one thousand lire, or forty pounds per annum.

Remuneration mattered nothing to him. Though he never displayed the possession of private means, yet he had them—a snug account in the Banca Nazionale in Milan. It was that which enabled him from time to time to enjoy brief holidays. Sometimes he left Santa Lucia, no one knew whither. The people were quite unaware that it was his habit to join the express in far-off Siena, and two days later arrive in that wonderful city of the English, London. He always pretended to them that he went to his own birthplace, away amid the misty rice-fields of Novara.

That morning, while Don Mario had said mass in the dark, ancient, little church, Ambrose had sat and listened to his droning Latin. Not more than twenty of the villagers were present, mostly women in their peasant dresses of bright colours. The men of Santa Lucia did not go to church except on the festa. If they prayed once a week they considered it all-sufficient.

The steady flames of the long candles, the dull gilt of the altar, the time-dimmed holy pictures, the rich but faded vestments which his friend wore, the fragrance of the incense, the dark solemnity of that black, cavernous interior in contrast with the brilliant sunshine outside, all had made a great impression upon the fugitive from England.

He had sat thinking then—just as he was now thinking as he watched his friend pursuing his dry-as-dust hobby, the deciphering of ancient records—whether Don Mario was really the pious, high-minded servant of his Maker he pretended to be.

They had known each other for many years—more years than he cared to remember. Yet now that he looked back along the vista of the past, certain recollections crowded upon him—recollections of strange happenings—recollections which aroused within him the strange suspicion that the soul of Don Mario was not such as he had believed it to be—that beneath that mask of deep-eyed devotion and human charity lay a heart hard as the stone and black with evil.

He was watching that yellow, sphinx-like face over which the skin was drawn so tightly, and as he watched the thin hand slowly transcribe the crinkled parchment he became seized by certain horrible apprehensions.

Could it be true what had once been whispered?

No. He knew Don Mario too well. What his enemies had whispered concerning him was a lie—a black and wilful lie.

That night, after the old bell in the square white tower had clanged out the venti-tre unmusically, after vespers had been said in the gloomy church by the light of a few flickering candles, and the sun had disappeared in a blaze of crimson, green and gold behind the giant Apennines, half Santa Lucia assembled under the dusty plane-trees in the little piazza, gossiping, flirting, or scandalising their neighbours.

The hook-nosed priest had taken his guest for a stroll through the dark, narrow, evil-smelling streets where the swarthy, beetle-browed men and women had wished him felicissima notte, and more than once had he lifted his shabby biretta in salutation. Then, emerging from the dark, tunnel-like, old place, so narrow that two bullocks could scarcely pass abreast, they went down the hillside looking out across that world of hills which, in the failing light, seemed infinitely far away, like mountains in a dream.

Out of Maremma night was coming up. Beneath them, as Ambrose halted to look around upon the wonderful panorama, the olives stirred in the night wind from the sea.

Gradually the light faded, and, little by little, the barren world of mountains became lost in an immense and beautiful shadow as both men stood there upon the hillside, their faces turned towards the Eternal City.

Suddenly Ambrose faced his companion, and said in a low, strained voice:

“I wonder, Mario, what has happened in London?”

The old priest started slightly, then recovering himself instantly, replied with a short, harsh laugh:

“Ah! I wonder! The mystery is, no doubt, as complete as ever.”

“Of course,” said Ambrose with a grin. “And yet—well, I only wish I knew the true extent of Medland’s knowledge. Why did he take Maidee into Westminster Abbey?”

“With one motive alone—to identify your features from the statue.”

“I know,” sighed the old man. “Yet how could he have suspected me when Richard Goodrick died, and had been buried?”

“Medland evidently knows more than we think,” remarked the priest, watching the serious face of his guest, which was just discernible in the faint light.

“What care we? He will never solve the mystery,” declared Ambrose with confidence. “He may suspect various things, but happily he cannot prove anything. We have taken elaborate precautions against that.”

“The peril is increased now that he has taken Maidee into his confidence. The girl may act as your enemy—instead of your friend.”

“And if she did, Mario, what irony of fate that Maidee—little Maidee—should be the means of my exposure!”

“Yes,” the priest admitted. “But in this world of ours there is much contrariness. Not infrequently it is our dearest friends who become our enemies, and those we love best are the first to turn and rend us.”

“But she suspects, Mario. I know that she suspects!” cried the other.

“I think your attitude towards Gordon was not well advised,” said his friend. “I commented upon it at the time. The course you adopted was amazingly clever, but your shrewdness and tact might, with greater advantage, have been directed into a different channel. As far as I can see, there was no need to strike terror into the heart of the girl’s lover.”

“Ah, yes,” sighed Ambrose; “I admit that I acted injudiciously. Tulloch I knew well, and I was also aware that Tulloch had blackmailed him because of a secret he held. In confidence I learnt from him how Gordon Cunningham, soon after leaving Oxford, had married secretly a young girl named Helen Weaver, employed as typewriter in an estate office at Tunbridge Wells. The girl was eighteen. In a year he grew tired of her, and she died mysteriously. The allegation was that Gordon had got rid of the encumbrance—by poison.”

“By poison!” gasped the priest in surprise. “How? By what means?”

“Ah! That I cannot exactly tell. All I know is that, on the night the pair parted, she was found dead in a lodging somewhere in Camden Town. The medical evidence was to the effect that she had died of poison—Tulloch alleged murder—and he knew!”

“Knew!” cried Don Mario, greatly interested. “How did he know?”

“Because he alleged that Gordon had, a few days before, surreptitiously abstracted from his rooms a small quantity of a certain subtle and very remarkable poison which he had in his possession. Tulloch alone knew the tests for it, and he threatened to furnish them to the Home Office analyst if Gordon did not pay a very substantial sum. The young man, frightened, as are so many victims of blackmail, paid a thousand pounds, and having once paid, continued to remain in Tulloch’s power.”

“Then it was of this that you, posing as Tulloch, lately threatened him?”

“I did not pose as Tulloch—I am Tulloch!” Ambrose declared in a low, hard tone.

“You!—Tulloch?” gasped Don Mario, staring at him. “Ah! I see. Then it was owing to your marvellous grasp of the political world—to your secret influence and prompting, that the young man so rapidly came to the front rank of politicians. But was there any truth in the allegation?”

Ambrose shrugged his shoulders significantly.

“And yet you allowed him to become engaged to Maidee?”

“The secret marriage and the girl’s death are, alas! true. The actual murder, however, is not exactly clear, I must admit.”

“But you say she was poisoned.”

“Little doubt of it. I contrived to apply the test myself, and proved conclusively that she died from the effects of a fatal compound.”

“What was the substance?”

“I am no toxicologist.”

“Well, my dear Ambrose,” exclaimed the hook-nosed priest after a brief pause, “I must say that I am surprised that, believing young Cunningham to have killed the girl, you should have allowed him to be engaged to Maidee, of all persons in the world.”

“It was, perhaps, a mistake, Mario—one of those fatal, foolish mistakes which all of us commit at times,” he said in a harsh, intense voice, scarce above a whisper. “Dear Maidee—dear little Maidee!” he added reflectively.

And he sighed as he turned his face to where the last faint flush showed in the sky between a break in the mountain peaks.

“You were Gordon’s evil genius,” remarked the priest quietly.

“With one hand I have pushed him forward until he is what he is now—the most talked-of and brilliant young man in London; while with the other I have blackmailed him and driven him to desperation.”

“But why?”

A silence fell between the pair.

“Was not his father my bitterest enemy?” questioned old Ambrose at last in a changed voice.

“And you intend that Gordon shall suffer—eh?” asked Don Mario, somewhat reproachfully. “Are you acting justly towards Maidee?”

“Ah! I never foresaw that she would fall in love with him. It was a staggering blow to me, I assure you.”

“But you are not antagonistic to their marriage, surely?”

“Not in the least. If Maidee really loves him, then I am ready to crush down my hatred—even to stand his friend, if necessary.”

“You have scarcely been his friend up to the present—eh?”

“Though I acted as his enemy in re-appearing as Tulloch and threatening him, yet my action was really in his interests. It caused him to put that question in the House.”

“Which very nearly resulted in his own undoing,” the priest said with a strange look.

“But which diverted suspicion from himself regarding the affair at Carlton House Terrace.”

“Ah! yes,” sighed the priest. “There were grave suspicions of the young man. Yet they were surely unfounded.”

“Of course,” said old Ambrose. “The death of Sir George and of the man Richard Goodrick are still as great mysteries as they ever were. I wonder by whose hand they really fell?”

“Ah!” exclaimed Don Mario; “I wonder! I have done all in my power to solve the mystery, but it still remains inscrutable. I can discern no motive—unless——”

“Yes, yes. I know to what you refer,” Ambrose said quickly. “But there was an absence of motive. The mystery is just as complete as on that fatal night when both men were so secretly and swiftly done to death.”

“Have you no theory—even now?” inquired his companion looking at him narrowly in the half light.

“None—none whatever,” was Ambrose’s reply. “I am thankful that poor little Maidee’s life was spared—that is all.”

“You believed her to be in peril, yet you suspect nobody?” continued the priest.

“Nobody,” declared Ambrose. “And yet,” he laughed harshly, “and yet I am a fugitive!”

Don Mario did not speak. It had now grown dark. From far away came the call of the night owl, the whistle of the night cecca through the still leaves. Somewhere beneath the olives a young rustic lover was strumming upon a mandoline, singing in the soft tongue of lazy Tuscany:

Avete gli occhi neri, e siete bella

A guisa di falcon che in alto mira;

Voi rilucete come chiara stella,

Come la calamità id ferro tira.

Al mondo non si vede la più bella:

C’e chi piange per voi e chi sospira.

C’e chi per voi sospira e piange forte,

Se non l’amate, si darà la morte!

With one accord the two men commenced the re-ascent of the hill, where, above, the lights of the mediæval village were already twinkling.

Don Mario sighed, pushed his biretta farther back upon his head, and clearing his throat, said at last:

“You say, caro mio, that young Cunningham killed the girl Weaver by poison stolen from you? Why did you have such dangerous stuff in your possession?”

Ambrose stood still, his eyes narrowing, then turning, he stared his companion full in the face, answering lamely:

“I obtained it from a friend—just a small quantity—and kept it as a curiosity.”

“Yet you knew the test to detect its presence. You applied it in secret and satisfied yourself that she had died of that poison,” remarked the priest very slowly, as, gazing into the other’s thin, drawn face, he added reflectively in a low, meaning tone: “I wonder—I wonder whether that same test, if applied in the cases of Sir George Ravenscourt and the man identified as Richard Goodrick, would have yielded similar results?”

Old Ambrose glared at the speaker for a single instant. Then he stumbled forward up the dark, stony road without uttering another word.

In the silent gloom he could not distinguish that the countenance of the hook-nosed old priest bore an evil, triumphant grin—that his expression was that of a keen, crafty man who was well aware of the ghastly and astounding truth.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE LOVERS

DRAWN up in a sheltered spot beyond the Wish Tower at Eastbourne was a bath-chair, and beside it sat a young man in blue serge, idly smoking a cigarette.

The invalid was Maidee, whose sweet face, lying upon the pillow, was pale and wan, and whose dark, deep-sunken eyes bore a strange, intense look as she turned them upon her lover.

Her mysterious attack on the night that Uncle John left London had very nearly proved fatal. The doctor, summoned at once by telephone, was entirely mystified by the symptoms, but suspecting poison when shown the hatpins, at once commenced to administer antidotes, telephoning for one of the best-known toxicologists, who, living close by, in Cavendish Square, came immediately to his assistance.

By their united efforts the life of the unfortunate girl had been saved, though for a week she had remained in a state of coma, hanging upon the brink of the grave. However, by dint of constant effort and careful nursing, she had now sufficiently recovered to be removed to the Grand Hotel at Eastbourne, where Lady Ravenscourt had rented a suite of pleasant rooms overlooking the sea.

Gordon was with her constantly, reading to her, walking beside her chair, or assisting her from one room to the other, for as yet she was too weak to walk without great effort.

He had paired for a month with a man who had gone to Egypt, and had come down to stay at the same hotel, so as to be near the woman he so dearly loved.

Her dangerous illness had brought them closer together. In the hours when he had sat at her bedside in Gloucester Terrace, he had held her hand and laid his very soul bare before her. She, too, knew now that he really loved her—and she was satisfied.

Yet, remembering the strange death of Sir George, she was ever anxious, ever nervous. That a dastardly attempt had also been made upon her life by the same means by which the baronet had been so foully done to death was only too apparent. Gordon knew it, but did not refer to the ghastly subject for fear of arousing terror within her, while she, on her part, kept her own counsel.

One day, when she had sufficiently recovered to receive a visitor, Inspector Medland came to her, and put some more of those strange questions regarding the mysterious Uncle John—the man whose face so closely resembled that of the statue of the dead statesman in Westminster Abbey. Medland had not been open and frank with her on that day when he had induced her to accompany him to the Abbey, and she, on her part, told him little.

She still regarded the strange old fellow whom she had called Uncle John with greatest respect and friendship. Therefore she was indignant with her questioner.

Once only had she written to the old man, addressing the letter to the poste restante at Maçon, an address he had sent her in a carefully worded telegram. She had managed to scrawl a few words telling him what had occurred, though it had been a very difficult task, for she had been so weak that she could hardly hold a pen.

He had received it, for in reply he had sent her a brief telegram of reassurance, urging her to be of good cheer. The telegram had been dispatched from the little French town of Arnay-le-Duc, which she had ascertained to be in the Midi.

The afternoon was bright and sunny, and before her, as she lay back in her chair, stretched the blue, calm expanse of sea. Few visitors were upon the promenade, for it was as yet too early in the season for the cotton-clad seaside girl and her male appendage.

On the right rose the green, breezy slopes of Beachy Head, while to the left ran the pretty promenade to the balconied Queen’s Hotel, and the long white pier.

Gordon had been reading extracts from a new book to her, an interesting account of the fall of the Sultan Abdul-Hamid, and had lain it aside, noticing that she had grown a trifle tired.

“Shall I call the man to take you back to the hotel, dearest?” he asked, bending over her tenderly, and noticing her fragile form.

“No, not yet, Gordon. It is quite warm and pleasant here. It is hardly three o’clock yet, is it?”

“Ten minutes to three,” he said, after glancing at his watch.

“How bright it is, to-day!” she remarked. “Look yonder. Is that a warship—that one far away there, with four funnels?”

“Yes, dear. That’s a first-class cruiser—one of the County class; going down to Portsmouth from Chatham, I suppose. But how do you feel now?”

The girl raised her dark eyes to her lover’s, and with a faint smile replied:

“Better, dear. I thank God I am much better—that He has spared me to you—the man I love.”

“Ah! yes,” he said, his manner changing instantly; “I, too, thank the Almighty always for His great goodness in giving you back to me. You narrowly escaped death, my darling—very narrowly.”

“Yes,” she said slowly, in a weak, faint voice, scarcely above a whisper. “It was intended, Gordon, that I should die.”

“By whom, do you suspect?”

“How can I tell?”

“My own theory, dearest, is that the unknown hand that killed Sir George and that recluse in Pimlico also made the attempt upon you.”

“But how?” she asked, stirring herself slightly. “Rayner is a most faithful maid. One cannot have any suspicion of her—or of any of Mrs. Beresford’s servants. What motive could anyone have to kill me?”

“Are you quite certain of Rayner’s loyalty?” asked the young man dubiously, as he finished his cigarette.

“Oh, Gordon! Think of the years she has been with us. If she were deceitful and flighty, or perhaps had some man at her back, as so many maids have, then it would be different. But surely Rayner is quite above suspicion?”

“Yet on the day following your mysterious attack Lady Ravenscourt told me that Rayner’s actions were very suspicious. I saw her, and I must admit that she looked haggard—full of fear—as though she were afraid of being accused.”

“Your fancy, Gordon,” replied the girl, again smiling faintly.

“But it was she who had access to the hatpins, remember. During your unconsciousness I called in Medland, and he made most exhaustive inquiries. He took possession of the pins, and it was found that all four of them had been infected with some most deadly poison. The Home Office analyst experimented with it. A touch of one of the pins upon a rabbit caused death with almost electrical rapidity, while a cat died in seventy seconds, and a sheep in one hundred and twenty seconds—two minutes.”

“Was it a known poison?” she asked with a slight shudder.

“No,” he replied. “According to the analyst’s opinion your life was saved through the pin first passing through your felt hat. By that means much of the deadly compound was removed, and the poison thus lost some part of its effect.”

“But can’t any expert in poisons recognise it?” she asked eagerly.

Her lover shook his head.

“There is one curious fact, however, which has greatly puzzled them at Scotland Yard, namely, that in several cases—eight or nine during the past few years—cases of wilful poisoning by this selfsame rapid and untraceable poison have been brought before the police, and investigated by Professor Salt.”

“So Medland has told me. He mentioned the name of one poor girl named Weaver, who lived at Camden Town, and was found dead.”

The keen, clean-shaven face of Gordon Cunningham went livid, and he drew back behind the covering of the chair so that Maidee should not discern his confusion.

“I—I believe so,” he managed to exclaim. “But, of course, I am not aware of the details.”

“Tell me, Gordon,” she said after a brief pause, broken only by the rhythmic lapping of the sunlit waves upon the yellow shingle. “I want to know your opinion. Do you believe that Sir George’s death was really due to the same poison as that placed upon my hatpins?”

Cunningham hesitated. He stirred uneasily, and then said:

“Well, I hardly know what to believe, dear. The poison administered to Sir George was very rapid in its action, as shown by the fact that he was unable to alarm the household. Besides, you will recollect you told me that there was a tiny punctured hole in the neck. A similar mark was, I hear, upon the neck of Richard Goodrick.”

“There is a great mystery connected with that poor, unfortunate man, is there not?” asked the girl, her eyes fixed upon her lover’s face.

“Only that he was a recluse, I believe. Like many another man, he hated the outside world, and devoted his life to antiquarian study.”

“Nothing more?” she asked, turning her thin, wan face to his.

“Not as far as I am aware. The police certainly failed to find any of his relations. Why?”

“Because, Gordon, I always think that there must have been some very remarkable and close connection between Sir George and that obscure old man in Pimlico,” was her reply.

“Of what nature?”

“Ah! I do not know—except that Sir George found himself in possession of some great secret of the old recluse. By that curious statement this seems conclusively proved.”

“But who killed both men by such subtle means, and with such a master hand?”

“The same person, Gordon, who endeavoured to close my lips,” was her slow, half-whispered reply.

“Who was it? Have you any suspicion?”

“None. Neither have the police. It is all a mystery still. And yet the hand which killed the girl Weaver in Camden Town is, in all probability, the hand which struck down poor Sir George—which prepared my hatpins, so that I should inflict death upon myself.”

“No! no!” cried the young man, starting to his feet, involuntarily. “No, that is not true—I——” Next instant, however, he recovered himself, adding:

“Oh, pray pardon me, Maidee; I’m sorry if I startled you. Only I—I felt that you should not make such a wide-sweeping condemnation. The death of a poor girl in Camden Town long ago can surely have no connection with the dastardly attempt upon you!”

“But the same poison was used,” she exclaimed with a look of apprehension upon her thin white face. “I have escaped on this occasion, but how can I guard against another attempt? If I am marked down as the next victim, death may lurk in anything.”

“No, no,” he cried, endeavouring to reassure her. “Thank God that this attempt has failed. And we will be careful that there is not another. We will act together—we will devote every day, nay, every hour of our lives, to the unmasking of the murderer!” he added, again taking her thin, trembling hand in his.

“But, Gordon, I—I feel I am in peril—in deadly peril!”

“No, darling. With me at your side you are safe, I assure you—quite safe,” he cried in a strange voice. “Rest assured. Trust in me—and no harm shall befall you.”

And she looked up into his pale, determined face and saw fervent love and passionate affection mirrored there.

Gordon Cunningham loved her, and would soon make her his wife.

Sweetly she smiled, while he, glancing round to make sure they were not observed, bent until his lips touched hers.

“My darling!” he murmured softly. “My darling, no further harm shall ever come to you. I will never rest until I know whose criminal hand it was that prepared the awful death for you—never!”

And he turned away for a moment to hide the hard, haggard look upon his countenance, for terror showed in his eyes.

Was it that before them there had arisen the pale, ghostly vision of the soft-haired little typist—the dead girl, Helen Weaver?

CHAPTER XXIV.

IN FADED INK

THE month of May.

A still and brilliant night in the Umbrian hills.

The whole world of mountain and valley seemed to be lost in a soft veil of blue spangled with gold.

Far away over the jagged crests of the Apennines, like a horn of pallid gold, or a silver sickle for some precious harvest, the moon hung over the world that in her light was visible ever so faintly, as though seen through some impalpable but lovely veil.

Old Don Mario noiselessly let himself out of the battered oaken door of the presbytery. Its hinges had been well oiled long ago, for, truth to tell, he took frequent nocturnal rambles, unknown to old Teresa, to his English guest, or to the slumbering village.

As he halted for a second in the little piazza with its dark shadows beneath the planes, there was no sound except the distant wailing of a dog. Santa Lucia went to bed early, and rose with the dawn. And when it slept, no watch was kept by police.

Therefore Don Mario did not fear observation or comment.

His habit was to rise at half-past one o’clock, dress, and go forth into the night, just as he had now emerged.

As he stood by the wall of the little piazza—the short, low wall beside the church—there spread before him the whole breadth of the great valley. To the right on the hills, like the nest of an eagle, Castellazzara hung above the precipices of Monte Civitella. Dimly in the lonely obscurity of night San Casciano rose behind Celle on the sides of Monte Cetona. Somewhere, lost in the valleys, Proceno hid herself among the vines, Acquapendente behind the fantastic rocks, while far away the Lago di Bolsena shone like a jewel, Monte Limone rose like a ghost beside Monte Venere with Monte Fiascone, and beyond was the desert of the Campagna and that immortal city which it has brought forth.

Over everything lay an unbroken silence.

For fully five minutes the old curato stood gazing away into the night, then, with noiseless tread—for he always wore his felt-soled slippers on his nocturnal excursions—he turned and, descending a short narrow lane, skirted the great ruined walls of the village, and was quickly out in the open country below.

He walked briskly along a by-path through the vines until he had descended the steep hill, then, crossing the maize fields, he entered a small wood of chestnuts, following a narrow, tortuous path, which led at last to a small, half-ruined cottage, the broken windows of which had been boarded up—the house of an old contadino who had died, and whose sons had emigrated to England.

Producing an electric torch from his pocket, the old priest put a key into the latch, and next moment was within.

The lamp, which he lit quickly, revealed a weird, unusual interior; an old kitchen, at one end of which was a long brick stove with four holes for burning charcoal, at the other a table upon which were many glass vessels, a marble mortar and pestle, and some small heaps of dried herbs.

One of the fires, which had apparently been banked up many hours ago, still glowed red, and upon it was a small retort, for some distillation was in progress—some long and elaborate process.

By the light of the lamp the old priest first divested himself of his cassock, then, taking a pair of indiarubber gloves from a drawer in the table, he put them on and began to examine the retort, from which emanated a delicate perfume as pungent and subtle as some new Parisian extract.

A rough-haired terrier, tied up near the stove, whined to be released and licked his hand. He had brought it there on the previous night.

But he cuffed it back roughly, muttering some execration in Italian. A long wooden box stood close by, and the light of the lamp aroused its imprisoned inmates who showed at the bars. They were large brown rabbits.

Don Mario had rolled up his shirt-sleeves and was poking the fire, when suddenly he halted and held his breath.

He thought he detected a noise outside and listened. But at last, after prolonged and careful investigation, he satisfied himself that the wind had suddenly sprung up, and that the branch of a rose tree had struck the boards nailed before the window.

“No,” he murmured to himself in Italian, “nobody dare come here. The people are superstitious. Seven years ago when old Antonio died in this kitchen, I told them that he had been strangled by the devil, and I warned the village that anyone coming to the accursed house might share the same fate. The evil eye would be directed upon them, and ill-fortune would befall them and theirs. And”—he chuckled to himself—“and not man, woman, or child in Santa Lucia dare come near the place. It belongs to no one, and no one dare enter for fear of the devil. The superstition of the contadini is,” he laughed, “often very useful to the curato.”

Certainly he had inspired within the people of Santa Lucia a terror of that ruined cottage, now overgrown with weeds and tangled bushes. Old Antonio had been found there one night dead, with dark marks upon his throat and evident signs of strangulation; and the priest, because he desired uninterrupted possession of the house, had declared it to be the work of the Evil One himself, thus striking terror into the hearts of his ignorant and superstitious flock.

Carrying the lamp back to the table, he commenced a careful examination of the various pots and glass phials upon it. In a large glass bowl stood some dark grey liquid with a few small brown leaves floating in it—evidently some decoction in process of manufacture.

Still wearing his rubber gloves, he took a small portion of the liquid and placed it in a test tube. Then, lighting a small spirit lamp, he held it over the blue flame, every now and then carefully testing its temperature by means of a tiny thermometer.

At last, before it boiled, he added ten drops of a colourless liquid, taken from the retort on the fire, counting them as they fell, and again held it up to the lamp-light.

Its colour and character had become entirely changed. It was now perfectly clear and of a deep, bright blue.

“Benissimo!” he ejaculated in complete satisfaction. “It is the first step towards success!”

Afterwards he drew a broken, rush-seated chair towards the table, and, taking from his cassock a small roll of brown parchment, spread it out beneath the lamp-light.

It was in Latin—an ancient and much-faded parchment. He had bought it for a few soldi from an old man in Acquapendente, who had discovered it while demolishing an ancient house in the village. The man had found it preserved in a small cylinder of rusty iron and concealed in a hole in the wall.

When opened, it was about ten inches long by five wide, and covered with neat, even writing in ancient characters, much of which was so faded as to be hardly decipherable. One corner was ragged, while upon it were dark brown stains of damp, or of rust from the iron cylinder in which it had been preserved.

“Twelfth century,” the old priest murmured to himself as he put on his big, heavy-rimmed glasses—the magnifying glasses he always used when pursuing his palæographical studies. “That is evident from the signs for ‘et,’ and by the ‘a’s.’ ” Then he read and re-read several lines, against which he had placed marks.

“Yes,” he went on, “I have carried out all the instructions to the very letter. Soon—very soon—we shall see whether the result is such as is claimed. The man who placed this secret upon record may have done so in order to fool any who might be able to read his abbreviations and understand his cryptic references. Yet, somehow, I’m inclined to think the contrary. The record bears upon its face the mark of being genuine. I am more than ever convinced that it is the actual lost secret of the great Doge Dandolo of Venice, the man who swept away his enemies like flies, and who captured Constantinople! The two Foscari are known to have possessed it and used it, and now—and now it has fallen into my hands! Yes, I am certain it is what I suspect. There is that mysterious passage towards the end which speaks of the Michieli and the Morosini families, plain proof of the motive of such a secret being placed upon record! And I bought it—the secret of the Doge Dandolo—for ten soldi!”

Slowly he deciphered word after word, softly chuckling to himself, his hooked nose the more accentuated until, bent beneath the lamp, he looked like some evil bird of prey, gloating eagerly over the triumph which he knew must be his.

From the pocket of his ragged cassock he took two letters. One was written in German, and as he read it he smiled. Enclosed was a German banknote for five hundred marks.

“To be sent to the poste-restante at Cologne,” he muttered as he read. “I wonder what this Herr Mayer intends? Tired of his wife, perhaps—or waiting for dead men’s shoes! It is always either for love—or for money. Yet I sell them what they want, and it matters not to me to what use it may be put.”

The other letter bore the Paris postmark, a few lines in a well-educated feminine hand, addressed to a certain Signor Corradini at a newspaper shop in Dean Street, Soho, London. A thousand-franc note was enclosed, with a request that “the medicine” be sent to Madame Lambert, in the Rue Muret, at Chartres. The writer, judging from the note-paper, was some elegant Parisienne, who had arranged to have the “medicine” sent to a maid, or some friend in whom she could trust.

At regular intervals letters addressed to that obscure newsvendor’s in Soho in the name of Corradini were sent to him in Italy. Surely it was a strange correspondence.

“Dio mio!” he laughed as he turned over the Frenchwoman’s letter. “I have, indeed, a curious clientèle! Some of them come again and again, growing more daring when they learn that, in effecting its purpose, it leaves no trace. Parents rid themselves of their children, husbands their wives, women their lovers, men their mistresses or their enemies, and the fatalities are all declared to be due to natural causes! In few cases—only with the foolish bunglers—is the truth suspected, yet it cannot be proved in the absence of any trace.”

And he paused, the Frenchwoman’s letter still in his hand.

“Wants freedom from an odious marriage, without a doubt, and has heard of the marvellous ‘cures’ of Giovanni Corradini,” he went on. “Well, well—if I dared to speak I could tell the police some very strange stories. Most of my clients use fictitious names for obvious reasons, yet in many cases I have made inquiry, and before supplying the ‘medicine’ have ascertained the real name of the person who has sought my assistance. Often have I been utterly staggered. Some of the greatest men and women in Europe have been my clients, and the heart secret of many a bereaved man and woman I could, if I chose, lay bare. Ah! yes,” sighed the old man, “my friends are, indeed, a very strange set.”

The small test tube containing the blue liquid had now cooled, and, replacing the letters in his cassock, he relit the small glass spirit lamp; and after adding twenty drops of a certain red fluid, as set out in the crinkled, half-effaced parchment, he again replaced the tube over the blue flame, and, leaning his elbows on the table, watched it boil.

“Diavolo!” he muttered to himself. “How people bungle! Poor Contessa Vanni! What a story in the Corriere della Sera the day before yesterday. A month ago she wrote to London under the name of Annetta Bardi, and gave her address at the Hôtel Europe, in Turin. I sent the extract, and a week later her lover killed her husband, Count Francesco Vanni, in their palazzo at Bologna. But she showed fear, was suspected, arrested, and now has confessed. It is really most annoying. I shall now have to change the address from London to Paris, as she may tell whence she obtained the few drops of extract, and a trap may be set. A trap! And yet I have successfully avoided all traps for the past eleven years!” he laughed harshly. “Corpo di Bacco! I’ve sent out a good many homœopathic doses in that time—I’ve been responsible, I suppose, for a good many mysteries. How often have I seen in the papers accounts of the sudden death of one well-known person or another, and have traced the hand of one or other of my mysterious clients. This world of ours is, indeed, a curious study, and perhaps no more lucrative profession exists than that which I have followed with so much success and in such secrecy!”

He was watching the bubbling of the liquid in the glass tube above the flame. It had turned a bright orange. He placed his watch on the table beside him, and then slowly and very carefully re-read the directions in the ancient manuscript.

Presently, from the capacious pocket of his old cassock as it hung upon a nail, he drew forth a tiny wooden box, which, on being opened, disclosed a few small white crystals. With a pair of tweezers, and still wearing the gloves, he took a single crystal and dropped it into the orange-coloured fluid, when at once it turned a dark, dull green.

He again referred to the manuscript, and, well satisfied at the result obtained, blew out the flame to allow the liquid to cool.

“If it is what it is claimed, then it is a far safer and more potent spinal poison than the other. Against the one I have placed in commerce the difficulty has always been its subcutaneous injection. But this—this is most terrible and fatal—a mere touch externally upon the skin, and the noxious action upon the body will commence, and terminate with death. It is the mysterious poison of the Doge Dandolo, of Venice, and probably, later, of the Borgias themselves. A single touch, and no trace is left, yet death must surely ensue. Unknown to the modern toxicologist, it is the only means of destroying life without arousing the slightest suspicion. So if any previous extract has been worth so much to me, what is this not worth—providing it is what this ancient record claims? But we will see.”

And taking a small quantity of fine white powder, he spread it upon a piece of glass, and upon it poured out a few drops of the dark green liquid, which the powder at once absorbed.

Then releasing the whining dog, which at once turned and tried to lick his face, he took a pair of scissors and clipped off closely a portion of the fur beneath the shoulder, where the skin showed pink and tender.

Then, dabbing one of the fingers of his safety glove into the damp powder spread upon the glass, he carefully applied it to the animal’s skin, stroking it three times across the spot whence the hair had been removed.

Afterwards he released the animal, which began to frisk as before, wagging his tail merrily while the hook-nosed old man watched calmly.

Twenty seconds later by the watch, the animal suddenly halted. A convulsive shiver shook its frame. Its body began to twist with short, spasmodic movements, and it looked up, crying piteously at its torturer. In forty seconds from the time of the deadly application it was lying upon its back, its body writhing and distorted; in seventy seconds it lay stretched out, dead.

“Benissimo!” cried the old priest, rubbing his gloved hands enthusiastically. “Here at last have I recovered the secret of the external poison of the ancients—the means by which whole families may, if necessary, be wiped out without the slightest danger, or even suspicion! A new commodity for my clients!” he laughed aloud. “When it becomes known what I can now supply—that a small quantity dusted into a glove, placed upon the handle of a knife, or upon the pages of a book will produce the desired effect—then there will be rush to secure some, just as before.”

He paused, glancing across at the dog’s body lying in the shadow.

“It is really surprising,” he continued, still murmuring to himself, “surprising how, without advertisement, one receives those well-disguised applications, accompanied always by remittances. But this new commodity must be given a real and actual trial—upon the human body as well as upon that of the animal.”

And beneath the lamp-light his aquiline face relaxed into a dark, evil grin.

An owl was hooting mournfully outside. It was the only sound.

In that ruined place a great and appalling fact had been rediscovered—the means by which human life could be destroyed in defiance of detection even by all the tests of the modern analyst.

Surely the thin, gloved right hand of Don Mario Mellini was the Hand of Death!

CHAPTER XXV.

CONCERNS THE UNEXPECTED

THE old priest rose unceremoniously, kicked the dog’s body away beneath a bench out of sight, and then, returning to the table, carefully collected the fatal powder, dried it, and placed it in a tiny glass-stoppered phial.

After spreading some more of the powder upon the glass, he treated it in a similar fashion, again drying it by holding the sheet of glass over the flame of the spirit-lamp and continually moving it about.

Having thus exhausted all the fluid, the ingredients of which had taken him over a fortnight to prepare, he placed the powder in the phial, which he carefully sealed with black wax.

The old man, bent to his work of sealing up the deadly compound he had prepared, was, truth to tell, one of the greatest experts in Europe upon the history and properties of poisons and their effects upon the living body.

Beneath the cloak of religion he had for many years prosecuted experiments, both in the small back room in his own presbytery, which he always kept locked from old Teresa, and in that secret laboratory wherein he was now closeted.

He was speaking to himself in Italian as he dropped the hot wax upon the glass stopper of the phial.

“The truth contained in this manuscript,” he murmured, “has upset all the previous theories and calculations of toxicologists. Absorption has been believed to vary in its degree and rapidity, not only according to the state of the poison, but according to the nature of the surface to which it is applied. All the known poisons which can be absorbed through the unbroken skin, such as belladonna, creosote, prussic acid, morphia, and the like, are absorbed slowly; when the cuticle is removed, and the surface of the true skin is laid bare, then the absorption takes place with much greater rapidity. In this discovery of mine the substance itself seems to act chemically upon the skin, and thus leads to rapid and complete absorption.”

He took the lamp, recovered the dog’s body, and examined the place whereon he had rubbed the deadly powder.

There was no mark whatever upon the skin—nothing to show how death had been caused.

“For a woman,” he laughed, “the powder may be darkened and placed upon her hair-comb. For a man, a little upon his penholder, the handle of his walking-stick, or upon his shaving-soap. A disease of the spinal marrow will at once be caused—an unknown disease, which will puzzle the whole medical profession. In the manuscript the symptoms are described—violent spasms, the limbs separated, stiff and rigid, and violent shakings of the whole body. At first the spasms are marked down the back and legs, but after a brief period they fix upon the chest, and result in violent tetanus, with fixation of the muscles of respiration, death supervening with the intellect perfectly clear. In the dog those symptoms have been exact—so they will be in the case of the person upon whom experiment must be made.”

Don Mario’s source of income was surely an amazing one. His snug bank balance was being constantly added to by those mysterious remittances which were reaching him so frequently from all corners of Europe.

He now removed the gloves he wore for safety, and, opening a drawer in a rickety old cupboard, took out a tiny glass tube an inch long, sealed with red wax, and a small, sharp, hollow-steel pin about four inches long, and ending with an indiarubber bulb—something like the filler for a fountain-pen. After scribbling a few words in pencil on a piece of paper, he packed all together in cotton wool in a small box—a poisoner’s outfit—and, after sealing it for registered post, wrote upon it the address of Madame Lambert, in the Rue Muret, at Chartres, France.

The directions were to press the rubber bulb, and so take up the contents of the sealed phial. Then, on touching the living flesh with the hollow pin, the fatal fluid would be injected like the fang of a serpent. It was strongly recommended that the victim be approached while asleep, and, if possible, the instrument should be applied to the scalp, as the hair would then hide the puncture. The pin and phial must at once be got rid of—by burning, if possible.

This mode of destroying life was quite simple and effective—and it was popular.

Italy has ever been the home of the poisoner. From the earliest days the subtle poisons came thence, and to-day there lived in that obscure rock-village the man to whose deadly preparation hundreds of villainous deaths in various towns and cities had been due. He, the man charged with the cure of souls—the man who gabbled Mass each day in that gloomy church heavy with the odour of incense—supplied men and women with the wherewithal to destroy life, to sweep away their enemies, and to profit by the sudden death of their friends.

In every prefecture of police in Europe it had been suspected that there existed a man who supplied secretly some subtle and remarkable poison to purchasers. But so cleverly had Don Mario acted, and so wary was he always, that he had never been suspected.

He had clients who wrote again and again for that curious little outfit; and often when he received from far distant cities those repeat orders he wondered what was in progress, and longed to know the tragic truth. One success always induced the perpetrator to effect a further coup. As many as half a dozen times had the order been repeated in certain cases, which showed plainly that one victim after another had fallen.

In the few cases in the South of Europe where the puncture had been discovered, it had invariably been attributed to the bite of a venomous snake—so closely did it resemble it. And yet no reptile had been discovered.

Presently he took out a second outfit, phial and pin complete, and, carefully packing it, addressed it to Herr Herman Mayer, at the poste-restante in Cologne. Both packets he placed in the capacious pocket of his old cassock, his intention being to send them over the mountains into Perugia on the morrow, to be dispatched by post from there. He was too wary either to receive correspondence or dispatch the “extracts” from the little post office at Santa Lucia.

Before the dull, gilt altar, with its tawdry decorations, this man so often chanted, with that slow, droning, nasal intonation: “Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam. Et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum, dele iniquitatem meam.” And yet he dispatched that fatal extract, well knowing for what dastardly purpose it was required. He always sent the little outfit anonymously. The letters to the mysterious Signor Corradini were forwarded from the newsvendors in Dean Street, Soho, thence to a house in the Place Vert in Antwerp, whence they were sent to a friend in Paris, who, in turn, sent them to the curato of Santa Lucia—the pious, sedate, and sympathetic priest who led such a quiet and colourless life. Yet this man, who fasted daily before saying Mass, and who was so observant of all the rules of his religion, was reaping a golden harvest from those anxious and eager to commit murder without risk of detection.

Besides old Alexandrovski of Odessa, an ex-professor at the Imperial Hospital at Moscow, recently arrested, Don Mario was the only regular and reliable purveyor of poisons in Europe—truly a highly lucrative undertaking.

The quick growth of his secret clientèle had been remarkable. Apparently one person recommended him to another, even though the recommendation was in itself tantamount to an admission of guilt. Truly any prohibited profession always prospers.

Of a sudden, as he reflected, it seemed to occur to him to test the potency of the liquid he was about to dispatch to Cologne and Chartres. Therefore he took a third needle, and, after filling it slowly, drew out a struggling rabbit from the cage.

With a quick movement he injected the deadly fluid into the animal’s blood.

The effect was almost electrical. In twenty seconds the poor animal lay dead.

The hook-nosed old priest watched the result, and grunted in satisfaction.

He, the man who always expressed such solicitude for the welfare of the poor of the village; he to whom the ignorant contadini looked for guidance and assistance; the man beloved even by those ruffianly men who were little better than the bygone brigands of the Maremma, was of strangely complex character. His heart bled for those starving contadini who were little better than the slaves of the padrone who lived in wealth and luxury away in Perugia, Siena or Rome; and yet he could look on at the tortured agony of those dumb animals without the slightest trace of feeling. He sold those deadly little outfits, fully aware that by their agency innocent men and women, even children, were being sacrificed by the crafty criminal to secure his or her own dastardly ends.

Suddenly noticing the dog’s body lying there, mute evidence of the terrible potency of his most recent discovery, he took it, and, dragging it forth out of the door, flung it away into the copse.

Afterwards he returned and cleansed his hands in the bucket of water standing in the corner of the kitchen.

The ancient manuscript was lying half curled up upon the table, and this he carefully rolled, prior to replacing it in his pocket.

Suddenly, without warning, he gave vent to a low, horrified shriek. He noticed that upon the faded parchment some of the fatal powder had been spilt.

And he had touched it! His hand had come into contact with it, for the tips of his two fingers looked dusty.

“Dio mio!” he shrieked in terror. “I—I never noticed it!” and, dashing across to the bucket, he again plunged both hands frantically into the water.

“Surely I am not to be the first victim of my own preparation! But—Santa Madonna!—I feel a pain—a strange pain down the spine!” and he placed both hands behind his back, declaring to himself that fiery pains seemed to be shooting through him.

There was an absence of pain in his hands. The poison had been absorbed rapidly and was effecting its work. The spinal cord was already attacked. It was the first symptom!

He stood rigid, aghast, as the horrible truth became only too apparent.

“Madre di Dio!” he shrieked wildly again. “I—I’m poisoned! I——” and he stood stiff, his eyes starting from his head, his jaws fixed, in unspeakable terror.

His limbs were trembling violently. He felt constriction in the throat, tingling and numbness in the hands and feet, and loss of muscular power.

“Diamine! It was my own fault! I should have been more careful!” gasped the unhappy man, looking helplessly around his improvised laboratory. “It is Fate!—accursed Fate—that I should be the first to die by the deadly compound I have rediscovered—to die the death of a dog!”

Violent spasms seized him. He felt that he could not breathe, and a cold perspiration stood in beads upon his brow. But still there was no pain in the tips of his fingers which had come into contact with the fatal powder. His face and hands were livid.

Of a sudden he left the table against which he had been supporting himself, and staggered across to the drawer which stood half open.

From it he snatched up a little hypodermic syringe, and, with the last strength he possessed, filled it from a small phial, and stuck the needle into his left wrist.

Next second he fell heavily forward upon the floor, his limbs stiff and rigid, his mouth spasmodically closed. The eyes protruded, the pupils were dilated, as though he were peering in horror into the torment beyond.

A sharp spasm shot through him, causing his whole body to shake violently.

Then all was still—the stillness of death.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE FESTA OF CORPUS DOMINI

WHEN old Teresa set out the big bowl of coffee and milk and the long rolls of bread and small pats of butter before the guest on that bright, sunny morning she wished him buona festa.

It was Corpus Domini. The procession was the great day of the year in Santa Lucia, as in every other village, or little borgo, throughout the Apennines.

The sindaco, old Marco Simonetti, who was a libero pensiero, yearned to have it suppressed. He would have forbidden banners, music, colours, lights, public services, masses and vespers. But the villagers were not of the same mind. They loved the gay processions which gave the girls an opportunity of showing off their finery, and they attended the mass said by their dear old Don Mario. Most houses had open doors and a full table that day, and at nightfall there were dancing and illuminations in the little piazza.

Already the old church bells were jangling, for since dawn Gaspardo, the hunchback who acted as sacristan, had been tugging the ropes, announcing to Santa Lucia the one day of its year.

Ambrose sat in the small, bare room where the flies buzzed noisily in the sunshine, awaiting his host’s appearance. Don Mario did not break his fast, of course, till after he had said mass.

The Englishman sat in a low chair with folded arms, his face turned to the little garden where, through the open door, showed the wealth of roses, magnolias and lemons, the lilies and stocks and sweet-smelling carnations, while the little pergola was well-shaded by a leafy vine—a vine that was cool and restful.

Santa Lucia was waiting in eager expectation. The people knew how very peacefully and piously the festa began. Then how good-natured and gay it quickly became, for they, ignorant peasants as they were, mingled the sacred with the profane in a strange jumble. With devoutness they would one moment sing “O salutaris” as they followed the Host, and the next would hum waltz music or sing snatches of comic songs as they jumped around in the dance.

In the gloomy old church, now gay with lights and decorations, many men and women had assembled. All was hushed. Those who spoke whispered.

They were awaiting the revered old curato—the director of their festa.

But they waited, and waited so long that everyone began to wonder.

Gaspardo, in his frayed black gown, came into the presbytery and whispered with Teresa. Then he ascended the stairs to the Signor Reverendo’s room.

A minute later Teresa approached their English guest, saying with great concern:

“Scusi tanto, signore, but the padrone is out. It is very strange that he does not return, when he knows to-day is the festa.”

“Oh, I suppose he has gone out for a walk, and is detained,” replied the Englishman. “I am in no hurry; I will wait till his return.”

And rising he went forth into the piazza where many people had assembled in the bright sunshine, and where he received their good-natured greetings because he was the curato’s friend.

A drum and some battered brass instruments were piled beneath a tree, and a stall had been set up for the sale of sweetmeats to the children. All were dressed in their best. Most of the young men had their jackets slung on one shoulder and their shirts well ruffled above the trouser-band. Some wore jays’ wings in their broad-brimmed hats set askew; others were in their everyday clothes, well brushed, with polished boots. The girls were in bright colours, many of them with freshly plucked flowers in their hair, a gay, laughing, chattering throng, full of anticipation of the day’s merriment.

Santa Lucia was in festa. On that one day in the whole year she forgot her troubles, the oppression of the Government and the landowner, the brutality of the fattore, or agent, and the black starvation which was so often endured through the dark months of winter.

Gradually the crowd in the piazza was increasing. The little church was now filled to overflowing, and everyone waited—waited for the coming of Don Mario, without whom the religious festival could not proceed.

A man, a carter, approached John Ambrose, doffed his hat politely, and inquired if the Signor Reverendo were indisposed.

“Oh, no,” replied the elderly Englishman in excellent Italian. “Not at all. He went out this morning for an early walk, and has not yet returned. He will, no doubt, be here in a few minutes.”

The carter explained this to a group of men standing near, and quickly the rumour spread that the curato was absent—mysteriously absent.

The first feeling was one of distinct antagonism. Don Mario knew that it was Corpus Domini, and at least he should be present. It was his duty. The Government paid him to be there, to fast, to say mass, and to conduct the procession and the subsequent festa. It was really too bad to keep half the village waiting in the church while he leisurely took his morning stroll.

An hour passed, but the curato did not come—another hour—and yet another—even until the noon-day sun rose high in the cloudless heavens, the people waited, wondering—and still wondering.

Then wonder gave place to anxiety. Something must surely have happened, they whispered among themselves. What could have occurred?

Don Mario would never wilfully desert them like that.

The whole piazza was agog. The festa was forgotten in the intense anxiety as to what had befallen their beloved curato.

Old Mr. Ambrose held counsel with Teresa and Gaspardo.

“The padrone must have gone out very early,” declared the old crone. “I was up soon after four, but I heard nothing. He must have gone out before then.”

“Something has happened to him,” the hunchback declared huskily. “He is always so very particular that Corpus Domini should be kept well, and that the people shall be satisfied. He gives ten lire to the man who keeps the sweet-stall, so that the children shall have sweets distributed. I cannot understand.”

“Well, what shall we do?” asked Ambrose, himself alarmed at his friend’s non-appearance.

His secret fear was that Don Mario had descended the hill during his walk, and had perhaps fallen into the hands of a couple of carabineers awaiting him. Scotland Yard might have suspicion of him, and if so, they would request the Pubblica Sicurezza in Rome to effect his arrest. And yet, as he reflected, he suddenly recollected that the Italian Government never gave up their subjects for offences committed abroad.

The thought was a gratifying one. And yet if Don Mario were a free agent he would hear the festa bells of his own church still ringing, and they would surely recall him to duty, even if he had forgotten.

Gaspardo, the crooked, sun-tanned old fellow who had never been beyond the confines of the commune, urged that a party of men be sent forth to search the adjacent woods, for, as he put it, “an accident may have befallen our dear curato, and he may be lying somewhere insensible.”

Ambrose was silent. He knew not what to do. Perhaps if the party went forth they would ascertain that Don Mario was already on his way to Rome, handcuffed between two carabineers. If so, might it not be his own turn next?

He knew well that Scotland Yard had discovered the friendship between Richard Goodrick and Don Mario, who lodged in Denbigh Street. They had searched, and failed to find the priest. Perhaps they had now been successful, and had preferred some charge against him. Who could tell?

“But this absence of your master is not exactly unusual, is it?” he asked of the hunchback.

“Oh, he has been absent often—for weeks and weeks at his own home away in the north,” was the sacristan’s reply. “But we always have a deputy, generally young Don Lippo, who comes from the Abruzzi. He has never before left us without a word.”

“Except once, Gaspardo,” interrupted the old donna di casa. “You remember about three winters ago, when he suddenly disappeared just like this, and six days later we had a letter from him bearing a foreign stamp. It was English, old Faello said. So he had evidently gone to England.”

“Bah! they say so, but I don’t believe it. The padrone goes to see his brother somewhere in Novara. He never goes abroad. That is only gossip,” said the hunchback.

“But he goes strolling about o’ nights, Gaspardo,” declared the old woman. “You know he does. You know what they’ve been saying of late about his midnight walks.”

“The sindaco and his friends say that—because they must say something against everybody. I know all about it. They’ve been busy hinting that he has a clandestine love-affair—he, at his age! Oh! really it is too funny!”

“Yes, they say he goes down the hill in the night to meet somebody of the opposite sex,” snapped the old crone. At this John Ambrose pricked up his ears.

“How long has this rumour been current?” he inquired of the old man.

“Oh! about three months, I think, signore. Of course, it is only spread in order to prejudice him. They have never been able to say who the woman really is—and if they could, they certainly would.”

“But the fact remains that the padrone does go out very often at nights—on wet nights also, they say. Well, where does he go?” asked Teresa.

“How can I tell, woman? If he has been watched, as you say, then the watchers must know,” replied the hunchback quickly.

“But they are saying all sorts of things out in the piazza,” declared Teresa. “The only way is to tell them to search the woods—if the signor Inglese agrees.”

John Ambrose had no other course than to agree. He recognised that the attitude of the village, deprived of their festa, was becoming threatening. A quarter of an hour ago, while in the piazza, he saw the black looks of the disappointed men. A lad started to strum upon a mandoline, and was roughly cuffed for playing music.

The little flags waved in the summer breeze, but there was no music, no gaiety, no laughter. The village had become sulky in its bitter disappointment.

At two o’clock a large party of men assembled, and under the leadership of a tall, swarthy giant, Vincenzio Canterelli, who kept a trattoria and wine-shop, and was known to all in Cencio, went down the hillside to search the woods.

Ambrose, standing beside the low wall of the piazza and looking over the sunlit valley below, watched the party with their dogs break up into smaller parties and go forth in different directions in search of the missing priest.

Most of the men of Santa Lucia descended to the plain to assist, leaving the women to chatter, gossip, and form all sorts of wild theories as to the curato’s absence.

The Englishman overheard some strange rumours during that long, anxious afternoon—rumours which caused him to ponder deeply. That Don Mario was in the habit of taking nocturnal rambles was evidently common knowledge, and though a love affair was hinted at, yet there seemed no tangible evidence of his ever being seen in conversation with any woman.

The long, hot hours dragged by, but the men did not return. From the piazza the women watched the tiny groups moving like insects over the green country deep below. And as the time passed, and the sun sank slowly over the Maremma and the distant sea, the anxiety increased.

Something had certainly happened to Don Mario. A dark shadow had fallen upon the village of Santa Lucia.

Evening fell, but no one had the heart, or even dared to light those little lamps hung around the piazza. The drum and the brass instruments still stood piled against the tree. The sweetmeat stall had been removed. The day was over—it had passed for the first time for ten centuries without the feast of Corpus Domini.

Men were arriving home jaded and fagged after a fruitless search. For a great many miles around the whole of the country-side had been examined with scrupulous care—the quarries, the precipitous rocks, the woods and streams had all been patrolled to no purpose.

Night was closing in and Don Mario was still missing. He had mysteriously and absolutely disappeared.

It was late; indeed, the moon had risen before the last search-party came up through the narrow mediæval gateway, which led, steep down, to the road to Rome.

They were shouting, and quickly the village became aroused. The people rushed from the piazza to the old gateway.

Then they saw, by the flickering lamps, that a dozen men were carrying gently something upon boards.

“We have found him!” the men were shouting excitedly. “We have found him!” cried Vincenzio. “But——”

And the outburst of the anxious villagers drowned the rest of the man’s sentence, as they turned with their burden up the narrow lane towards the small white presbytery.

John Ambrose dashed towards them, a lantern in his hand.

He held it high as he looked upon his friend’s white, upturned face, then uttering a cry, he let the lamp drop from his nerveless fingers upon the grass-grown stones.

CHAPTER XXVII.

FROM OUT THE PAST

THAT night John Ambrose sat silent, motionless, and thoughtful at the bedside of his unconscious friend.

He had been found by one of the dogs lying unconscious in the woods, four kilometres distant. Apparently he had been on his way home, and had dropped from exhaustion. He was without his cassock, a fact which had given rise to much comment in the village.

“He will explain it all when he comes to his senses,” they said. The doctor from Acquapendente had been summoned, and had sat for half an hour in that bare little upstairs room declaring that his patient had evidently suffered some severe shock. Restoratives applied were all to no purpose. He was white and pulseless, his heart beating only faintly.

“To what, in your opinion, doctor, is the attack due?” Ambrose asked anxiously.

“Ah! caro signore, I really cannot tell. Perhaps some sudden fright—perhaps the effect of exhaustion. It can only be cured by complete rest.”

So the unsuspecting medico had prescribed, and left the curato to the care of old Teresa and his guest. Medical science is not very advanced in the obscurer villages in Central Italy, and the diagnosis of the doctor from Acquapendente was by no means a correct one.

Old Teresa remained below, but the hunchback came and went noiselessly, inquiring from time to time after the health of the padrone, while the Englishman sat anxiously watching his closest friend.

What had occurred? What sudden fright could Don Mario have possibly sustained?

The more superstitious in the village were declaring that the priest had encountered the Evil One himself in the woods, and that Satan had triumphed. But the others shook their heads dubiously and scented mystery.

In the long watches of the night John Ambrose sat motionless, watching intently the prostrate unconscious man who had been found lying across the narrow footpath leading through the wood towards Monteleone. His body had been drawn up, as though by pain, his white bony fingers clenched into the palms.

Once, only once since he had been laid upon his own narrow, little iron bedstead had he shown signs of life—a deep, long-drawn sigh. Still his faithful friend watched by him, ever anxious for returning consciousness.

The face upon the pillow was deadly pale, the nose more hooked than usual, the sallow cheeks sunken, the eyes half-closed.

As John Ambrose gazed around the bare little whitewashed chamber where a small red light burned before the time-blackened ancient picture of the Madonna and Child, whereon had been placed a dead spray of flowers, he could not help his thoughts running back a good many years.

The doctor from Acquapendente had expressed a fear that the curato was dying. He might never recover consciousness, he had declared before he left—promising to return again at dawn.

And as John Ambrose sat with his gaze upon the thin, pale face, just discernible in the dim light of the oil lamp, there arose before him the vision of an autumn day long ago, when Ellersdale, his great ancestral mansion in Dorsetshire—one of the show places of England—had been filled by a gay shooting-party; for he usually gave two each pheasant season.

Prime Minister of England, a bachelor, owner of one of the finest estates in the kingdom, and the trusted friend and adviser of his Sovereign, his was surely the proudest position a man could hold. Among his guests were many notable people, as well as his youngest brother, the Honourable Rollo Lambton, with his wife and infant daughter, Irene, and not least among those noteworthy guests was Father Mellini, the fashionable Roman Catholic preacher. A man of elegant and commanding presence, good-looking beyond the average, he was highly popular among the women of smart society who fêted and lionised him.

Political duties had recalled the Earl to Downing Street, but he had been absent from his guests only one day when, at evening, on stepping from his carriage and entering the great vaulted hall at Ellersdale, Hinkson, his butler, had handed him a note.

Opening it, he found a few brief words of farewell from Don Mario, who explained that he had been suddenly called to London by the Cardinal at Westminster, who wished to see him. The Earl expressed no surprise, for Father Mellini’s movements were often erratic, as he laughingly told his other guests over the dinner-table that night.

Three nights later—ah! how well he recollected that fateful evening—a strange incident occurred. All the other guests had left the smoking-room and retired when, as was his habit, he had invited his brother Rollo into his own den, a small, cosy oak-panelled room, for a final cigar before turning in.

He noticed that Rollo, tall, thin and athletic, was somewhat annoyed, and attributed it to the fact that he had been unlucky at bridge. But he flung himself into the big arm-chair before the fire, took a cigar from the box, bit off the end viciously and applied a match to it. He had always been against his brother’s marriage with the giddy, ill-bred little woman, who was a Catholic and had been bred in the suburbs of London, and now, as he had predicted, she flirted outrageously, and caused poor Rollo much pain and anxiety. He had mentioned it on the previous night, and his remarks had led to some angry words between them—words that were overheard by two of the guests.

They had been smoking together for five minutes or so, in that silent, old-world room to which he always retired when desirous of quiet, and Rollo had just poured out his whisky and soda, when he suddenly uttered a strange cry, and, half-rising from his chair, fell back, gasping that he had been seized by a strange pain in the throat.

The cigar had fallen from his fingers, and with both hands he was tearing at his collar convulsively. Lord Ellersdale, greatly alarmed, loosened it, and gave his brother a draught of soda-water. But the sharp agony increased, his limbs shook, and he complained of shooting, excruciating pains down the back.

“Get a doctor, John—quick!” he managed to gasp. “I—I believe I’m dying!”

The Earl rang the bell violently, but before any of the servants arrived his brother Rollo had collapsed and breathed his last.

His wife, the pretty, fair-haired young woman in her pale blue dressing-gown—the woman whose flirtations had scandalised the whole house-party—threw herself beside him, almost insane with grief. It was indeed a terrible scene. Try how he would, he could never forget—never. Neither could he rid himself of those painful recollections of all that followed; of the inquest; of the evidence of the Home Office analyst that the cigar smoked by the dead man had been impregnated with some most deadly substance—some unknown neurotic poison. Then the local police had visited Ellersdale, seized the box of cigars, and found another of them to have been prepared, while on searching his lordship’s den, they discovered, locked in one of the drawers of an old buhl cabinet, a tiny glass-stoppered phial, half-filled with some brown liquid, which proved to be the poison used upon the cigars.

The discovery staggered him. He alone had kept the key of that cabinet, yet he had no knowledge whatever of possessing poison. How it had come there he could not tell. His reputation, both as Prime Minister of England and as a private citizen, was now at stake. He knew that the quarrel with his brother regarding the latter’s wife had been overheard—therefore the circumstantial evidence against him was complete. He was quick to realise the worst.

In his intense agony of mind, and in hourly fear of arrest and consequent scandal upon his political party, he sought his old and most intimate friend, Gilbert Cunningham, an Under-Secretary of State, who was one of the house-party. He, in turn, consulted Sir Frank Nesbitt, and they, in the very strictest confidence, interviewed the Home Secretary, the result being that the warrant already issued for Lord Ellersdale’s arrest was suspended for a week.

Then Cunningham and Nesbitt had come down to Ellersdale. Ah! how vividly he recollected that tragic interview in his own great brown library where, with locked doors, they told him frankly that his innocence would never be believed by a jury, that it was alleged he had killed his brother at the instigation of the latter’s wife, and that the only way to escape arrest and trial was—suicide!

At first he vehemently protested, but the pair sat inexorable, sphinx-like. Then they told him an amazing fact. His sister-in-law had made a statement seriously incriminating him, they said. The Party must not suffer. On hearing that, he bowed to their decision, and announced boldly that he would rather die by his own hand than bring scandal and shame upon his political friends. One thing he asked—that the Sovereign should not be told.

And so it was that his illness was announced, and soon afterwards the papers reported his unexpected death. Yet, so well was the whole secret kept—the two doctors receiving big fees for their certificate, and the undertakers for not looking inside the coffin—that not half a dozen people knew how he had been hounded to his end, or that any allegation had been brought against him. The Sovereign sent a representative with a wreath to his funeral, and even his great friend, Sir George Ravenscourt, remained in ignorance, for Cunningham and Nesbitt kept their oath of silence. Two years later both had died, within a few months of each other.

From the position of Prime Minister and holder of the Earldom of Ellersdale, with a handsome income, a deer-forest in Scotland, and a villa at Cannes, the broken man passed, in one single hour, to the obscurity of Richard Goodrick, the eccentric lodger in Charlwood Street, Pimlico. His elder brother succeeded to the great estates, while the suburban woman who had made that mysterious and incriminating statement regarding him went abroad, taking with her her little child.

Three years later she died of phthisis in Geneva, and little Irene, left an orphan, had been brought to England by Sir George and Lady Ravenscourt, who adopted her. It was then that, under the guise of the inoffensive John Ambrose, old Richard Goodrick sought the child out in the park, and ever afterwards kept up that strangely romantic acquaintance.

He still had one firm, faithful friend in Don Mario, who, however, had, soon after his “burial,” fallen into disgrace at the Vatican, and had, alas! been exiled back to that obscure parish in Italy. Yet the one bright spot in his aimless, broken life was the meeting in the park with little Maidee—his pretty, merry-eyed niece, who always called him “Uncle John.”

Through all those long years of weary obscurity and oblivion, the curato of Santa Lucia had never ceased to stand his friend. At infrequent intervals the priest would escape from his barbaric parish in the Umbrian hills and travel post-haste to Denbigh Street, there to be near his old friend—to talk over the past, and to gossip, as in bygone days, when both were great and honoured men.

Don Mario, the man now lying between life and death, was the only living person who knew the truth—who was aware of the real cause of the death of the Earl of Ellersdale, or that, though the fine monument stood to perpetuate his memory in Westminster Abbey, yet he was still alive.

Alas! even he, the devout cleric, his only friend, was now being taken from him!

They had undressed him and laid him upon his narrow, meagre bed.

How different were their positions eighteen years ago—he Prime Minister of England, and the silent, unconscious man there one of the most popular preachers in the United Kingdom.

His own brilliant career had been cut short by that amazing conspiracy which had arisen against him. Someone must have placed those two prepared cigars in the box—someone must have opened that cabinet by means of a false key and hidden the phial therein. For what reason? Either to fix the crime of murder upon him, in order to ruin him both politically and socially, and bring him to the gallows, or perhaps to make it apparent that he himself had wilfully committed suicide.

Somewhere a secret enemy had lurked behind him. But he had been unable to trace his identity. Most probably it had been a political conspiracy, he thought.

Yet what mattered? His two friends Cunningham and Nesbitt believed him to be the murderer of Rollo, so he had bowed bitterly to the fate to which they had condemned him. From the police they had obtained back that tiny phial which they had handed to him so that he might take his own life by the same means as that of his brother had been taken.

Could a man’s public career have ended more tragically?

The old man drew a long, deep sigh as he reviewed the past, his deep-set eyes fixed upon the motionless form of the priest lying upon that narrow bed.

Old Teresa, with sun-browned, wrinkled face, moved noiselessly, stopped to peer in, but uttered no word.

She saw the Signor Inglese bent, with his brow upon his hands—bent beside her padrone, his friend.

She heard him mutter low, broken words in English, but she could not understand them.

She only knew instinctively that her old padrone was slowly dying.

The words uttered by the old Englishman were:

“God forgive me! God forgive!”

CHAPTER XXVIII.

TELLS GORDON’S SECRET

A CALM, cloudless evening.

The broad waters of the Channel lay bathed in the brilliant after-glow, for the sun was just disappearing below the horizon, and a fresh, health-giving breeze sprang up as Maidee and Gordon sat together upon a seat high upon Beachy Head.

They were alone. Already in the big lighthouse the light was flashing, it being lit at sundown, while away in the distance ships were passing—the busy traffic of England’s great waterway.

During the past fortnight Maidee had almost completely recovered—sufficiently, indeed, to ascend those steep, grass-covered slopes from Eastbourne. She no longer used her bath-chair, and already her cheeks showed that she was deriving great benefit from the sea air.

In her neat, dark brown tailor-made coat and skirt, and small, close hat with white veil, she presented a smart appearance, while her face, distinguishable through the wisp of net, was surely one which would be remarked anywhere. Gordon, as he sat at her side, her hand tenderly in his, presented a well-set-up figure in dark grey tweeds and soft felt hat. She was secretly proud of him—when on the esplanade she saw how, on every side, people turned and then whispered among themselves that the smart, clean-shaven young man was none other than Gordon Cunningham, the man of the moment, whose name was mentioned almost daily in the papers.

At the Grand, men and women were ever anxious to make his acquaintance, while several young girls had shyly brought her their autograph books, asking her to induce him to sign them.

As she sat there, her face bathed in the crimson sundown, he had wound his arm tenderly about her waist, and, raising her veil, had kissed her upon the lips.

Then, after much hesitation, he at last summoned courage to tell her something—something which he had longed to reveal to her for months, and yet had not dared.

“Maidee,” he said at last, peering into her eyes, “I want you to forgive me. I—I want to tell you something which, before we go further, you should know. I want to confess to you something—so that others may not tell you and, in the telling, distort the story.”

She started, staring at him in alarm.

“Why, Gordon!” she asked, “what’s the matter?”

“Nothing—only I want to tell you something—something about myself—a secret of my life.”

“A secret! Then tell me,” and her gloved fingers closed convulsively upon his as she looked into his face.

“Well, I want to tell you this, dearest,” he said in a low, intense voice, his gaze fixed upon hers. “A few years ago, soon after I left college, I met an elderly man named Tulloch, a financial adventurer, who I have strong reasons to believe was a friend of my late father. Though a man who moved in that shady set which haunts the big London hotels in search of pigeons to pluck, and though always full of schemes that were bogus, yet he became my friend, and to his secret influence I certainly owe my advancement. He assisted me, he said, because he owed a debt of gratitude to my dead father. Sometimes his movements were very strange. He lived in chambers in South Audley Street, and was often absent abroad for long periods—looking after mining properties in which he was interested. After my first journey in the East I met a young girl, who, though in humble circumstances, attracted me, and—well, I may as well confess it at once—I married her at the registry office at Marylebone.”

“Married!” she shrieked, starting up and facing him in dismay.

“Listen to the truth, darling,” he urged very quietly, still holding her hand, and slowly drawing her back to her seat. “Ours was a secret union. Nobody knew—not even Tulloch, my closest friend. We lived in lodgings in the north of London under an assumed name, yet—well, I was not happy. From the first week I knew I had committed a grave error. Yet I had married, and the girl was my wife. Before my marriage my wife had a pet fox-terrier, very old and half-blind, that had belonged to her brother; and one day she declared that the poor animal, being useless and complained of by the landlady, must be destroyed.”

“But why tell me this?” cried Maidee, interrupting. “You are married—Gordon!”

“Hear me to the end,” he said very earnestly. “It is but right that you should know the whole truth. A few days after the suggestion made by my wife, I was, one evening, in Tulloch’s rooms, and our conversation turned upon curios. From a drawer in his writing-table he took a tiny bottle, which he said was one of the strangest curios he possessed—for the half-dried liquid it contained was a most deadly poison, a single drop of it, either taken by the mouth or injected into the blood, being sufficient to cause death. I examined it with curiosity, and asked where he had obtained it, but my inquiry evidently caused him annoyance, for he snatched it from my hand and threw it back into the drawer. Half an hour later, when he had gone into the next room to answer the telephone, I suddenly recollected the blind terrier. Therefore, I opened the drawer, took out the poison, and next day gave it to my wife, telling her to handle the stuff with greatest care. She expressed disbelief that any poison could be so potent, but poured out a small quantity upon a piece of sugar, which she placed on the mantelshelf of the sitting-room, intending to give it to the animal when he came in. I took the bottle back and left, for I was anxious to replace it in Tulloch’s rooms. When I entered his chambers he at once looked me in the face curiously, and asked what I had done with the poison. I fear I was confused, but was compelled to produce it and restore it to him. Judge my horror, however, when, a few hours later, I learnt through the newspapers that my wife had been found mysteriously poisoned almost as soon as I had left her. She had had, I recollected, a slight scratch on her left thumb, and, in holding the sugar as she dropped the fluid upon it, she had, no doubt, absorbed the noxious drug—whatever it was. My first impulse was to go to Camden Town and make a statement to the police. But if I did I should be compelled to acknowledge, my secret marriage. Therefore, I refrained. In my despair I consulted Tulloch, when, to my dismay, he coolly declared me to be a liar, and accused me of the wilful murder of the girl Helen Weaver. He had somehow ascertained that I had married.”

“Helen Weaver!” gasped Maidee, pale and agitated. “And she was your wife, Gordon!”

“Yes, dearest,” he replied in a low tone. “I have told you the whole truth because—well, because from that moment Tulloch became my enemy. He blackmailed me—then disappeared, and I heard he had died in Italy. But only recently he has reappeared again to taunt and torture me with a crime of which I am entirely innocent.”

“But, Gordon, has it not been proved that the girl Weaver, and several other different persons in London, died by exactly the same mysterious drug as did Sir George and that poor old man in Pimlico? And yet this man Tulloch was, as you can prove, in actual possession of the mysterious poison!” she exclaimed.

“I know,” he admitted; “it is all a complete mystery. Tulloch returned, and urged me to put that question in the House—threatened that if I did not he would come to you and allege that I killed Helen; and yet, at the very moment when I had risen to interrogate the Home Secretary, I received an anonymous note declaring that if I did so my secret enemy would encompass my ruin. I stood with ruin on either side; I hesitated—and suppose I must have fainted.”

For a few moments a silence fell between the pair, a silence only broken by the screaming of a gull above them.

Then Maidee, her womanly sympathy asserting itself, took her lover’s hand, saying:

“Poor dear! I did not know all that. I—I ought not to have misjudged you. Forgive me!”

“Of course, darling,” he said, “I have told you this because—well, because I know not from one day to another whether Tulloch may not return and again repeat the dastardly allegation against me.”

She paused, her face turned thoughtfully towards the darkening sea, for the evening light was now fast falling.

“And yet, surely it is a very suspicious circumstance that this man Tulloch, who is your enemy, possessed the drug which has for so long mystified both police and analysts. Medland has told me that both Sir George and the man Goodrick fell victims to it. Could Tulloch have been acquainted with the pair?”

“Who knows? He is a strange person—a man who is a past-master of many professions, especially of politics. Once he told me, I remember, that he knew Sir George.”

“Ah! Then it was he who killed him—without a doubt,” the girl cried. “Cannot we tell Inspector Medland, and let him search for the culprit?”

“I think that would be injudicious at present,” was the young man’s reply. “Tulloch, having returned from the grave once, will again come back to taunt and torture me. When he reappears, then we will tell Medland of our suspicions.”

Maidee inquired what kind of man Tulloch was, and her lover replied, giving a description of him as near as was possible.

“But,” he added, “his very profession compels him to travel rapidly and sometimes to change his personal appearance. He has often confessed to me that to have dealings with thieves one must be a thief oneself.”

“Is he still in London?”

“No—abroad, I expect. Were he in London he would, no doubt, call upon me. He is such an enigma that, on the one hand, he is ever doing me some little service, and yet, on the other, he declares himself ready at any moment to expose my secret marriage with the ill-fated Helen Weaver and assert that she died by my hand.”

“I wish I could tell Uncle John what you have explained to me,” said the girl reflectively.

“Uncle John? Who is he?”

“Only an old gentleman I call uncle, though he is no relation,” she replied. Then, on being pressed by her lover, she, in contradiction of Ambrose’s express wishes, revealed to him her long and strange friendship with the unknown old gentleman who had frequented the parks in order to get sight of her and listen to her childish prattle.

“How very strange!” exclaimed Gordon, when he had heard her to the end. “I wonder who he can be?”

“I don’t know, nor do I care. Only, he is my closest and dearest friend. I am anxious to see him, to ask his opinion regarding this fellow Tulloch—to ask whether he suspects that Tulloch is also responsible for that dastardly attempt to kill me.”

“Where is this Uncle John? Where does he live?”

“He has recently lived over in Walworth; but at present he is away. I last wrote to him to the poste restante at Maçon. He surely will return to London very soon.”

Gordon did not reply. He was thinking over the remarkable and romantic revelation which his well-beloved had just made. Who could the mysterious Uncle John be?

Together they sat hand in hand, almost in silence, watching the great, grey night clouds rising away to the left—watching until the navigating lights of the shipping began to twinkle in the dark blue, and the great, broad, warning ray from the lighthouse showed a bright beam across the darkening waters.

Then they rose. For a few moments he fondly held her slim form in his arms, kissing her passionately upon the lips. Then they retraced their steps down the hill into Eastbourne, both filled with grave wonderment.

That same evening, almost at the very hour when the pair rose to leave that seat high on the summit of the promontory, a respectably dressed woman called at Scotland Yard, and to the constable at the door gave her name as Mrs. Jewell, the wife of a private detective living at Willesden, and having an office in King Street, Covent Garden. She said she wished to see an officer of the Criminal Investigation Department.

After a brief delay, she was taken up in the lift and shown to one of the big, bare waiting-rooms at the end of the corridor, a cheerless, depressing place, in which many a strange story had been told and many a crime revealed.

Presently to her came two officers, one of whom was Inspector Medland.

“I am in great distress, sir,” she said, addressing Medland, who was the older of the pair. “I have lost my husband.”

The detective smiled. The story of lost husbands is an everyday one at the Yard.

“Well?” he said in his sharp, business-like way. “Tell me the facts—as briefly as you can, please.”

“My husband and I had a few words back in January, and he left home to go to his office as usual in the morning. He was at the office all day. About seven o’clock, just as Martin, his clerk, was about to leave, a gentleman called. I’ve got the card which he gave.” And she produced the visiting-card of Sir George Ravenscourt.

This caused Medland to become at once interested.

“Yes,” he said; “go on.”

“Well, the gentleman had been to see my husband before, it seems,” explained Mrs. Jewell, “and after Martin left he remained talking in my husband’s private room. Some private inquiry, I suppose, for my husband does a lot of work for the aristocracy. From that moment till this he hasn’t been seen.”

“You say this occurred in January. Why didn’t you come here before, Mrs. Jewell?”

“Because when he left the house in the morning he said he wouldn’t come back. He’d said that before, and he’d always come back after a day or two, so I waited and waited; but he hasn’t come. Therefore, I’m now afraid that something must have happened to him.”

“What causes you to suspect that, eh?” asked the inspector.

“Because only yesterday I found out that Sir George Ravenscourt had died on the very night my husband disappeared—the night of the seventeenth of January!”

“The seventeenth of January!” echoed Medland, for he knew the man Jewell quite well. He had been a sergeant in the Criminal Investigation Department, and on retirement had set up as a private detective. “And he disappeared on the night of Sir George’s death—eh? Well, what do you suspect?” he asked.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE ACCUSATION

AFTER lying in a state of coma in his darkened room for over two days, Don Mario slowly struggled back to consciousness.

When, on opening his eyes at last, he saw the pale, anxious face of his friend Ambrose bent over him, he started, glaring at him in horror, as though some hideous phantom of the past had risen against him.

“Well, my dear friend,” exclaimed Ambrose softly, “are you better?”

“Eh? What? Where am I?” asked the priest, staring around his own room. Then, a second later, he sank back, saying: “Ah! I see! Why—I’m at home! I—dreamt I was somewhere else.”

Then for hours he lay motionless in silence, tended by old Teresa and the snuffy old hunchback sacristan. For days he remained convalescent, seated in his chair and receiving visits from the villagers, men and women who came to offer their congratulations, and then went into the church to offer thanks for his recovery.

The priest’s story of his attack was that, in walking along at early morning, he had become suddenly seized by a curious pain in the head, had become dazed, and fallen. More than that he did not know.

For nearly three weeks he remained indisposed; then of a sudden he grew quite well. But none knew that during the whole period he was secretly flinging away the doctor’s medicines and daily injecting a certain antidote into his arm.

The truth was that he had half recovered while lying in his laboratory, and had managed to get out, shut the door, and walk nearly half a mile before sudden exhaustion overtook him and he fell where he was found.

One warm night towards the end of June, when the whole village was asleep, he crept forth again down to the cottage, and there secured the little bottle sealed with black wax—the phial containing the rediscovered poison of the Doge Dandolo. Then, noticing that the rabbits in their cage were dead, he set to work to destroy all his apparatus, and bury it in a hole he dug in the wood a little distance from the house.

Afterwards he reascended to his presbytery, and just before dawn returned again to bed.

Three days later Don Mario left Santa Lucia to spend a few weeks at his imaginary home in the North, taking with him the Signor Inglese, while the young priest, Don Lippo, from the Abruzzi had taken up his temporary abode at the little white presbytery in the piazza.

Nearly six months went by.

In the dark November days in London—and the November of 1908 was exceptionally dull—two men were occupying furnished lodgings in a rather dingy, drab house in Walpole Street, off King’s Road, Chelsea. One was Don Mario, the other his friend, John Ambrose.

A few evenings before a serious contretemps had occurred, for Ambrose, while entering Sloane Square station, had been recognised by Medland, who, in surprise, had accosted him.

They had walked side by side for a long distance, right from where they met to Scotland Yard, whence the inspector invited him in, and then closely questioned him.

When he emerged an hour later Ambrose’s expression was unusual. Perhaps the detective’s questions had been disconcerting; but, in any case, his manner had entirely changed. He seemed to have aged fully ten years, for he retraced his steps to the underground station at Westminster, bent, serious, and very thoughtful.

Next day he returned to Scotland Yard—at Medland’s request, be it said—and was there interrogated by the Director of Criminal Investigations himself, while his friend the priest remained at home, as he always did during the day.

Of late the old priest had become silent and reserved, for he had been seized by certain suspicions regarding his friend Ambrose, and was calmly plotting a terrible vengeance.

One damp, foggy evening, about nine o’clock, Lady Ravenscourt and Mrs. Beresford, being out to dinner with an old lady in Brook Street, Maidee and Gordon were together in the drawing-room, happy in each other’s love.

The girl, in a pretty gown of palest pink chiffon, was seated at the piano, singing sweetly the old popular song, “Le Flâneur,” the light, cheery chorus of which ran:

Moi, je flâne;

Qu’on m’approuve ou me condamne!

Moi, je flâne,

Je vois tout,

Je suis partout.

Suddenly she was interrupted by the entrance of a maid, bearing a card.

She took it, rose from the piano, and for a second stood rigid.

“There are two gentlemen, miss—one is a clergyman, I think,” the girl said.

“A clergyman!” exclaimed Maidee, who, turning to Gordon, who had also risen and was standing beside her, added: “Uncle John has called! You will now have an opportunity of meeting him. Show the gentlemen up,” she added to the maid.

A few seconds later old Mr. Ambrose, well dressed and distinguished looking, entered the room.

“Why!” gasped Cunningham, staring at him aghast. “You, Tulloch! What does this mean?”

Maidee stood amazed as the two men faced each other.

“Yes,” replied Ambrose, “I am here to-night, Cunningham, to offer you an explanation; and this gentleman with me is Don Mario Mellini, who, like myself, knew your father very well.”

The priest, who had followed hat in hand, bowed low in his graceful Italian manner, expressing his great delight at meeting the son of an old friend.

“But, my dear Uncle John!” cried Maidee, “what does all this mean? Why did you pretend to Gordon to be Tulloch, an adventurer. You surely are not an adventurer!”

“Well, my child,” replied the old fellow, smiling upon her as he took her little hand, “I fear that the world would, if it knew the truth, condemn me as such. But I and my friend here have come to reveal to you certain curious facts, and to make one or two matters quite plain. Though it is much against my desire to disclose my real identity to your lover, yet I do so because I feel that I have acted wrongly—that I allowed my feelings of revenge to obtain the mastery. I regarded his father as one of my friends, yet, alas! he proved to be one of my worst enemies. Hence my brutal desire, first to raise his son to fame, and then slowly to crush him by blackmail and threats of exposure of a crime which I knew that he did not commit.”

“You refer to the mysterious death of his wife!” the girl cried. “Then he is innocent?”

“Certainly. I can vouch for his innocence, and I am here to seek his pardon—and yours, Maidee. When I formed my plot of vengeance I had no idea that he would meet you, and fall in love with you. Surely it was the irony of fate that my dear niece, to whom I have ever been devoted, should love the son of my worst enemy—one of the men responsible for my downfall.”

“What downfall?” inquired the girl. “Do tell us. You are always so very mysterious, Uncle John,” while at the same moment Gordon placed his arm about her slim, neat waist in protection as they stood together.

“Maidee, listen then,” said the old man in a strange, tremulous voice, after he had stood in silence for a few moments, looking into her dark eyes. “Have you ever heard of a man—a politician of some note—called the Earl of Ellersdale?”

“The Earl of Ellersdale!” cried Gordon Cunningham. “Why, he was Prime Minister, and died about eighteen years or so ago. He was an intimate friend of my father.”

“Yes, he was,” said Ambrose.

Maidee, staring straight at the old man at that moment, suddenly gave vent to a loud cry of dismay.

“The Earl of Ellersdale!” she gasped. “Why—why, Inspector Medland took me to see his statue in Westminster Abbey; and now—and now that I see you side face, I—I recognise the likeness! Are you—are you his brother?”

“No, Maidee,” was the low reply; “I am the dead Earl!”

The girl and her lover stood astounded. It was upon Cunningham’s lips to jeer at the man’s amazing statement.

Next instant, however, the priest exclaimed in his very good English:

“If any corroborative evidence is necessary, I am here to testify that my friend is actually the Earl of Ellersdale, with whom I was on terms of intimate acquaintanceship until three days before his death.”

“Ever since my death—a death connived at, nay, insisted upon—by the two persons into whose hands grave circumstances compelled me to place my future, my friend Don Mario has continued to be my friend. I lived in obscurity in Pimlico as Richard Goodrick.”

“Richard Goodrick! Are you, then, the man who died so mysteriously on the night when Sir George was assassinated?” cried Maidee, astounded.

“Yes, my child,” replied the old gentleman, fire showing in his dark eyes. “Let me explain.”

But Gordon Cunningham’s attitude was still antagonistic towards the old man. He had neither forgotten nor forgiven how, as Tulloch, he had bullied and blackmailed him.

“I do not see, dear, why we should be compelled to listen to all these explanations,” he said, addressing his well-beloved.

“Hear me!” cried the Earl. “You must hear! It is but right that you both should know the truth.”

“Yes, the truth!” interrupted the deep voice of a stranger, as at the same moment the form of Inspector Medland—whose visit had been arranged in secret with the Earl—entered the drawing-room. “Excellent; let us, at last, hear the truth!”

The girl, her lover, and Don Mario all started, staring at the intruder, who, bowing, smiled, merely explaining that he had called upon Miss Lambton, as he desired to have a chat with her.

“I’m considerably interested in this meeting,” he added. “There are one or two little matters which I am very anxious to clear up,” he added, casting a meaning look towards the Earl.

Don Mario, his face livid, stood as though transfixed to the spot. He was staggered by the turn of events.

“Well,” said the ex-Premier, drawing himself up proudly and clearing his throat. “Let me explain—let me relate the strange events which led to my supposed death and disappearance into obscurity,” and then in a few brief sentences he described the house party at Ellersdale, the mysterious death of Rollo, Maidee’s father, and the terrible accusation brought against himself. He told them of the cigar found to be poisoned, the second cigar lying in the box, and the phial discovered in the buhl cabinet, of which he alone held the key; how his friends Cunningham and Nesbitt had declared that all protest of innocence would be unavailing with a jury in face of his sister-in-law’s statement, and pointed out the scandal which must be brought upon the Party. Hence, with the clever connivance of the doctors and his friends, he had died, while those who had known the truth were now also dead—all save his friend Don Mario.

Maidee listened to the old Earl’s story in silence. At last she said:

“Then my mother could, if she had chosen, have cleared you of the terrible charge?”

“Yes, child,” was his slow reply. “Your mother, I fear, was fiercely antagonistic towards me, because I had been strongly against your father’s marriage. Hence she had made some statement that was false; and I could no longer remain Prime Minister unless I could prove my innocence. For that reason I went into obscurity, and am believed by the world to have died.”

“Ah! it was a wicked conspiracy! Who, then, killed my poor father?”

“That still remains a mystery,” was the Earl’s slow response, “an entire mystery.” He did not add that for some time he had suspected Gordon’s father of the crime.

“But, surely, my mother ought never to have made a statement that was deliberately false. It was shameful to have wrecked your life thus. She——”

“Hush, child,” said the old gentleman reproachfully; “remember she was your mother, and it pains me exceedingly to have related before you what I have been compelled to tell.”

The priest stood there, his sallow, clean-shaven countenance pale and drawn, his brow slightly knit, his sharp eyes fixed upon the speaker’s face.

“But what evidence can you show that you were not responsible for your brother’s tragic end?” asked Gordon Cunningham, still doubtful, and recollecting that the Earl’s disappearance from the political world had been accomplished mainly through his father.

“There is unfortunately no proof of my innocence,” replied the old Earl. “Only my own word that, though Rollo had quarrelled with me, I bore him no malice.”

Gordon smiled, but with a somewhat dissatisfied air. Whereupon Medland, who had stood with his hands in his pockets, at that moment stepped forward, saying:

“I think that this, which I found when searching the contents of the safe in Sir George Ravenscourt’s library at Carlton House Terrace after his death, may throw an interesting light upon the occurrence,” and he produced a letter written in a feminine hand upon black-edged notepaper, and addressed to Sir George from an hotel in Geneva.

The Earl took it with trembling fingers, read it through eagerly, and then turning swiftly and fiercely upon Don Mario, he pointed at him with his finger, saying:

“At last the truth is told! There stands the assassin of my brother Rollo—he, the man who for twenty years I have regarded as my faithful friend!”

Maidee and her lover stood aghast—dumbfounded.

Yet as they looked upon the priest they saw that his mouth was half open, and that he stood motionless as a statue, unable to utter a single word in self-defence.

His face had changed. Guilt was plainly written there. His tongue clave to the roof of his mouth.

He had lowered his quick, penetrating eyes and drawn his pale lips tightly before his accuser.

CHAPTER XXX.

WHAT OCCURRED ON THE SEVENTEENTH

THE Earl of Ellersdale handed to Maidee the letter written by her mother to Sir George Ravenscourt a few days before her death.

Both the girl and her lover read it through together eagerly.

Briefly it placed upon record her deepest regret at having so cruelly wronged the dead Earl.

“May God forgive me for my sin,” she wrote. “My poor husband Rollo was outrageously jealous. Being a Catholic, I naturally admired the preaching of the famous Father Mellini who, while my fellow guest of Lord Ellersdale, flattered me and courted me. He possessed a fatal fascination for women. Three days before poor Rollo’s death he entered the blue drawing-room suddenly, and there surprised Father Mellini holding my hand, though I had protested loudly against his amorous advances. A violent scene ensued, and my husband threatened that if the priest did not leave Ellersdale he would inform his brother, and create a public scandal. Father Mellini thereupon drew himself up, and openly cursed my husband, declaring that a fate should fall upon him that should be as terrible as it would be unexpected.

“Three hours later he left the house and returned to London. Rollo had assured me that he believed in my honesty; and, indeed, though I confess I greatly admired the priest, I had never, however, for a single moment encouraged his advances. On the next evening Lord Ellersdale returned from London, and when my husband was in the act of smoking a cigar, three nights later, he was suddenly attacked and died. In my husband’s death I traced the hand of Don Mario Mellini. He had, I knew, experimented with subtle poisons; yet I dared not come forward and make any statement, for by so doing I should have brought great scandal upon myself. Therefore, in order to shield my admirer, and also in order to wreak vengeance upon Lord Ellersdale, who had been my enemy throughout, I made certain unfounded allegations against him.

“Through me it was therefore believed that he had killed his brother, yet now I wish, once and for ever, to make it plain to you that such was not the case; the assassin was that prince of poisoners, the priest Don Mario Mellini. It was he who deliberately doctored the two cigars—one intended for my husband and one for his brother; while the phial, which I recognised as having seen once in his possession, he placed in the cabinet, which he opened by means of a false key. I have acknowledged it in the confessional, and I have since learnt with satisfaction that when the truth reached the proper quarter at the Vatican, Father Mellini was sent back to an obscure village somewhere in Italy. You, Sir George, were Lord Ellersdale’s friend, and therefore to you, now that I know my days are numbered, I confess and ask forgiveness for the terrible wrong I committed and the fatal vengeance I effected.”

Maidee held her mother’s last letter in her hand in silence, her eyes fixed upon the livid countenance of the accused.

“And now,” said Inspector Medland, well-groomed and wearing a fashionably cut grey overcoat and gloves, “I would like to make one or two observations. You all know that the death of Sir George Ravenscourt was a mystery—one of the most remarkable crimes of recent years, on account of the complicated circumstances. The affair was one which has greatly puzzled us. Though months have elapsed, yet I have never relaxed my efforts to elucidate the complex enigma. Only three days ago did I obtain conclusive evidence.”

“Of what?” asked the Earl anxiously.

“Of the motive of Sir George’s murder, and that of the man Richard Goodrick—supposed to be yourself. Listen, and if I make any false statement, please correct me,” he said. “On the afternoon of the seventeenth of January, Sir George, who had previously recognised you, came to your lodgings in Charlwood Street, and offered you a large sum—afterwards found intact in his safe—if you would reveal yourself, defy the police, and return to political life to lead your Party. He believed you were without funds. The country and the Party were in sore need of you, and he declared that he was in a position to prove your innocence concerning your brother Rollo’s death. But you refused. Is that not so?”

The Earl slowly nodded in the affirmative.

“That evening, after Sir George had left, you met this friend of yours, the priest, and told him what had occurred,” the detective went on. “It at once aroused the suspicion of this exemplary cleric; a deadly fear seized him, for he came to the conclusion that Miss Maidee had probably learnt the truth from some paper of her mother’s, and had told Sir George, who, in turn, was endeavouring to win you back from your obscurity. In fear of denunciation as the murderer of the Hon. Rollo Lambton, and filled with an insane desire for revenge upon the whole family, he formed a clever and dastardly plot. Let us reconstruct the crime. Later that night this man went to Carlton House Terrace—for he has been recognised as having been seen near the Duke of York’s column by the constable on the beat—and when Sir George returned home he accosted him outside the house. The Baronet instantly recognised him as the once-popular preacher, while he, on his part, explained that he had come to him in secret, as he had learnt that the Earl of Ellersdale still lived, and wished to consult him upon what action he should take—whether to announce it publicly or not.”

The man standing accused glared at the detective, who had now contrived to place himself between him and the closed door. He saw that he had been caught like a rat in a trap.

“Sir George invited him in to talk,” Medland went on, “and after some conversation sat down to place upon record the fact that he had met the Earl, and had subsequently learnt the truth from the lips of Father Mellini. But while he was in the act of writing, his visitor rose and stealthily crept behind his chair. With a quick movement he twisted his silk muffler around his victim’s mouth to prevent any cry he might make being heard, and with a long, sharp pin, probably a lady’s hat pin, prepared with the same poison as that used to kill Rollo Lambton, he inflicted a fatal wound in Sir George’s scalp—a punctured wound from which he died without a sound within two minutes.”

“It’s a lie—a foul lie!” shrieked the priest hoarsely, speaking for the first time in protest. The muscles of his mobile face were twitching, and his hands were trembling.

“I hardly think so,” said Medland, in a hard, pitiless tone, “for you slipped out of that house noiselessly and took a hansom over to Pimlico. I have the cabman who drove you from the rank at the bottom of the Haymarket. You got out in Vauxhall Bridge Road and went to Charlwood Street, to the door of which you had a latchkey, one lent you by your friend Goodrick a week before. You entered noiselessly, and there found your friend seated by his fire, busily examining some papers. You approached him in the same manner as you had crept up behind Sir George, and struck him in a precisely similar way. He turned upon you savagely, but the poison was rapid. In a few moments he was struggling in the death agony, unable to shout for assistance because you had twisted your handkerchief round his mouth. You went forth again, back to your lodgings in Denbigh Street. You believed that you had killed Richard Goodrick, because you feared that he knew the truth concerning his brother’s murder, and in order further to mislead and mystify the police, early next morning you sent a telegram to the dead man, purporting to come from Sir George. But you were horrified when next day the man you had killed called upon you—and you discovered that Richard Goodrick was still alive, and living as John Ambrose in a street off the Walworth Road.”

“But who was the man who was killed?” asked the Earl, greatly interested.

“A private detective named Jewell, who had been employed by Sir George,” was the prompt reply. “When you refused to return to political life, Sir George apparently became seized with wonder whether, after all, you were the dead Earl. Therefore he invoked the aid of Jewell—who had previously watched you after the baronet had recognised you that night—and who then suggested that he should make up as yourself and, after watching you out, make a thorough search of your apartments to see if anything existed there to identify you fully as the dead Earl of Ellersdale. While in the act of doing so, that assassin yonder entered and struck the blow which so swiftly proved fatal. It was true that the unfortunate inquiry agent wore a false white beard, but so did the Earl, a fact well known to the landlady, Mrs. Ayres, who was so excited by the tragic discovery that her examination of the dead man’s features was not very thorough. The doctor pointed out to me that upon the face were signs of grease-paint, yet on questioning Mrs. Ayres, she told me that she had known her eccentric lodger to disguise himself before going out for his evening walks. We therefore had no doubt but that the dead man was really Richard Goodrick, though we knew that about a man who resorted to disguises there must be some curious mystery. It was that mystery we failed to penetrate until the discovery of the priest who had suddenly disappeared from Denbigh Street, and this letter from Mrs. Lambton to Sir George Ravenscourt. That gave us our first clue.”

“But why did not Sir George take action, after receiving that letter from my sister-in-law?” inquired the Earl.

“Your sister-in-law died a few days after she had written. You, the Earl, were believed to be dead also. Therefore he locked up the letter and kept the secret. But,” the inspector went on, “you, knowing that someone had been killed in belief that it was yourself, visited Mrs. Ayres in the guise of an American interested in curios and secured certain documents which you had in concealment in your room, and which established your identity, eh?”

“That is so,” admitted the Earl.

“And afterwards, in the guise of Tulloch, the adventurer, in order further to torture Mr. Cunningham, you compelled him to ask a question in the House regarding the coroner’s verdict in the case of Sir George, while this Italian at the same time also sent him an anonymous letter threatening death if he dare put the question. So you see,” Medland added, addressing those assembled, “we have to deal with one who is a master-criminal—one who is an expert in the use of poisons, who prepares them in some secret laboratory, and who sells them, sufficient for a fatal dose at one thousand francs—forty pounds—a person. Ah! we have discovered it all! Not only is he an assassin—for it was he also, Miss Lambton, who, in order to close your lips, fearing what you knew, prepared your hat-pins and bribed a gas-fitter at work in the house to place them on your dressing-table for your use, just as he contrived to place the poisoned cigars for your unfortunate father—but he is also a purveyor of poison, a subtle, swift, undetectable and noxious substance by which dozens of people have died, as I will, later on, prove to the satisfaction of a jury.”

“Ah!” laughed Don Mario, defiantly. “You will have to substantiate all these startling allegations!” he said, his foreign accent the more pronounced in his excitement.

“I have my evidence ready, my dear sir,” responded Medland quite coolly. “We have not been idle during these past months, I assure you.” Then, turning to Gordon Cunningham, the detective added:

“To this man who has cloaked himself beneath his religion and is a disgrace to his Church, is due the ruin of one of the greatest political forces in our kingdom, the death of at least three persons, and a secret attempt upon the young lady whom you love. Besides, by distributing his secret poison to all who care to purchase it, he has been instigator in at least a dozen other murders in London alone within my own knowledge; of how many on the Continent may be left to the imagination.”

“He richly deserves the punishment which the judge will mete out to him,” declared the Earl with a gleam of hatred and contempt.

“I quite agree,” replied Medland, who took from his pocket a warrant for Don Mario’s arrest, while at the same moment there entered two of his men, Detective-Sergeant Wagner and a companion, both of whom had been engaged on the affair at Carlton House Terrace.

Don Mario’s aquiline features had become more accentuated. From the entry of Medland, he had realised that the game was up. His friend, the Earl, had cleverly induced him to call with him at that house, to see Maidee again, and had there entrapped him. All had been done at Medland’s suggestion, for at Scotland Yard it was feared lest the assassin might escape back to Italy, and so evade the English law.

Yet ere the two detective-sergeants could seize him, he had slipped from the pocket of his black overcoat a small gold toothpick with which he had scratched the back of his left hand.

The tiny abrasure of the skin was almost imperceptible, yet all present knew that with the potent poisons at his command he could summon death almost instantly, if he so willed.

And so it proved, for even as they looked they saw a horrible agonised expression cross his drawn, yellow face.

He tried to laugh at his captors in mocking defiance, but it was a hollow show of triumph, for the muscles of his thin cheeks had already grown rigid, and his arms and legs were trembling violently.

He endeavoured to speak; he suddenly clasped his hands as he faced the Earl, as though he would crave forgiveness, but next moment his legs refused to support him and he collapsed in a heap upon the floor.

Few poisons act with such rapidity as in the case of the one which he had been in the habit of using, for within three minutes of the self-inflicted scratch, the priest lay there, his body twisted and distorted in death.

His awful end was a terrible spectacle.

Maidee turned away with a cry of horror, covering her face with her hands, while the Earl and Gordon watched the tragedy in silence.

“One must indeed be thankful, Uncle John, that your life has been spared!” Maidee said at last, turning and placing her hand upon the old Earl’s arm.

“Yes, Lord Ellersdale,” exclaimed Medland, “when you disappeared from London, I confess I had serious apprehensions that you, too, had fallen a victim.”

“But is anything known outside of all this?” asked his lordship apprehensively.

“Not a syllable, save to us here in this room—and to the Director of Criminal Investigations. He, of course, does not yet know all the facts.”

“Well,” said the man who had been Prime Minister of England, in a voice trembling with emotion, “there yonder lies perhaps the most dangerous criminal in all Europe. Happily for the Roman Catholic Church—a religion which I, for one, hold in respect—there are few of its priests such as he. Beneath his benign smile he hid the bitter vengeance of a brutal heart, and under his cassock he carried death in its most horrible form. He was a man with fatal fingers. But he is dead, therefore let us all forgive, and I would beg of each of you still to respect my secret, to consider the whole matter as confidential, and still regard me as plain John Ambrose.”

“But will you not return to your own sphere?” asked Medland quickly. “The country is surely in sad need of you, my lord.”

“Never. My work is done, and I am honoured by a statue in Westminster. The world must never know the tragedy of my later life, and how two innocent men were foully done to death in order to preserve my incognito. No,” he said determinedly, in a low voice, “there must be no scandal. I shall go away to the south somewhere, and there end my days in peace.”

Maidee rushed across to her uncle, and, clinging to his neck, sobbed bitterly.

“As for you, my child,” said the old man, stroking her cheek tenderly, “you and Gordon, I understand, are to marry next month. May God bless you both. May you be very happy, and may the clouds that have overshadowed the youth of both of you never again reappear. You are comfortably off in your own right, my child, and I feel certain that Gordon will make you a most excellent husband.” Then, stretching forth his hand to young Cunningham, he asked in a low, faltering voice:

“Gordon, forgive me!”

“Why, of course, Lord Ellersdale,” exclaimed the young man. “Never let us recall the past.”

The pair grasped hands.

Then, Medland and his two subordinates having promised to regard the whole matter as confidential, Gordon placed his arm tenderly around Maidee’s slim waist, and, pressing his lips to hers, declared with a glad smile that that kiss was to be regarded as the seal of secrecy.

To-day the statue to the Right Honourable the Earl of Ellersdale, K.G., erected by Parliament, still stands in that silent row in Statesmen’s Corner. Many pause before it and recall the great Englishman who was unfortunately cut off at the zenith of his fame. But surely none suspect that in a pretty, white, rose-embowered villa facing the blue, sunlit bay of San Sebastian, the bay of golden sands just across the French frontier in Spain, there lives the hale and hearty old English gentleman, Mr. Ambrose, who is none other than the dead Premier himself.

His niece and Gordon, now man and wife, live in a large house in Grosvenor Street, and during each parliamentary recess never fail to make a journey by the Sud Express to visit Uncle John, whose identity is preserved even from Lady Ravenscourt herself. Fortunately, the Earl died before her marriage, so she never knew him.

The young pair, devoted to each other, enjoy a life of idyllic happiness, and, as you well know by reading the newspapers, Gordon Cunningham, whose popularity at one time was on the wane, after that fainting fit in the House, is now marked out for Cabinet rank.

Of all the clever young men in England, he ranks first.

But neither you, my respected reader, nor the public, have ever dreamt that his great success has been, and is still, due to the promptings and careful guidance of another—a master hand in diplomacy and politics—the famous Earl of Ellersdale.

And so is the great secret kept—the Secret of the Fatal Fingers.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

The edition serialized in The Graphic of Australia (Nov 1917 to Apr 1918) was consulted for most of the changes listed below.

Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. banknotes/bank-notes, post office/post-office, taxicab/taxi-cab, etc.) have been preserved.

This story was adapted into a silent film in 1916.

Alterations to the text:

Punctuation: fix a few quotation mark pairings/nestings and a missing period.

Merge two disjointed contractions.

[Chapter II]

“I was writing it when—when he—— Burn it. Promise ” replace the trailing space with a question mark.

[Chapter III]

Change (“The assassin must have entered with a key,” said Madland.) to Medland.

[Chapter XIV]

“showed her a photograph of the late Sir George Ravenscroft” to Ravenscourt.

[Chapter XVIII]

“two figures entered from Parliament Square a man in a dark overcoat” replace the space after Square with an em-dash.

“while her companion was Detective Inspector Medland!” to Detective-Inspector.

[Chapter XXIV]

Replace:

“application it was lying upon its back, its body writh-”

with:

“applications, accompanied always by remittances.”

[Chapter XXVII]

“fair-haired young woman in her pale blue dressing-grown” to gown.

[End of text]

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Table of Contents

FATAL FINGERS

CONTENTS

FATAL FINGERS

CHAPTER I. IS MAINLY ABOUT RICHARD GOODRICK

CHAPTER II. THE NIGHT OF THE SEVENTEENTH

CHAPTER III. THE AFFAIR AT CHARLWOOD STREET

CHAPTER IV. YET ANOTHER PROBLEM

CHAPTER V. IS ABOUT UNCLE JOHN

CHAPTER VI. SUSPICION!

CHAPTER VII. WITHHELD FROM THE PUBLIC

CHAPTER VIII. THE MAN OF THE MOMENT

CHAPTER IX. SOME CONFIDENCES

CHAPTER X. RICHARD GOODRICK’S SECRET

CHAPTER XI. CONCERNS LOVE AND A MYSTERY

CHAPTER XII. TO FACE THE MUSIC

CHAPTER XIII. FACE TO FACE

CHAPTER XIV. INTRODUCES A VISITOR

CHAPTER XV. FROM THE BEYOND

CHAPTER XVI. A SCENE IN THE HOUSE

CHAPTER XVII. TO PAY THE PRICE

CHAPTER XVIII. THE MARBLE FACE

CHAPTER XIX. MORE ABOUT JOHN AMBROSE

CHAPTER XX. REVEALS TREACHERY

CHAPTER XXI. DON MARIO AT HOME

CHAPTER XXII. CONTAINS AN ADMISSION

CHAPTER XXIII. THE LOVERS

CHAPTER XXIV. IN FADED INK

CHAPTER XXV. CONCERNS THE UNEXPECTED

CHAPTER XXVI. THE FESTA OF CORPUS DOMINI

CHAPTER XXVII. FROM OUT THE PAST

CHAPTER XXVIII. TELLS GORDON’S SECRET

CHAPTER XXIX. THE ACCUSATION

CHAPTER XXX. WHAT OCCURRED ON THE SEVENTEENTH

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE