The Red Room

“I certainly think so, sir,” was the woman’s response, whereupon I made a hurried adieu, and, rejoining the German, into whose palm I slipped a sovereign, was quickly back at the hotel.

I left Princes Street Station at ten minutes to ten that night by the express due in Glasgow at eleven. That hour’s journey was full of excitement, for I was now upon the heels of the false Professor, whose whereabouts and assumed name Kirk knew, and with whom he had made an appointment.

Was this man, known as Martin, about to meet Kirk?

I laughed within myself when I reflected upon the awkward surprise which my presence there would give them. What the lodging-house keeper had told me proved conclusively that Kershaw Kirk had conspired to cause the death of poor Greer, and that the story he had told me was untrue.

Yet, again, there arose in my mind the problem why, if he were the assassin, or an accomplice of the assassin, should he introduce me into that house of death – myself a comparative stranger! Alone I sat in the corner of the railway carriage, thinking it all over, and trying, as I had so continuously tried, to discern light in the darkness.

I had been a fool – a confounded fool, not to inform the police of my suspicions at the outset. The girl Ethelwynn, whom I had seen lying apparently dead, whose chill flesh I had touched, was alive and well at Broadstairs! Was not that, in itself, a staggering mystery, exclusive of that secret visit of Kirk’s to Foley Street, and the woman’s cry in that foggy night?

Was it any wonder, then, that I was neglecting my business, leaving all to Pelham, with whom I had communicated by telegram several times? Was it any wonder that, the circumstances being of so uncanny and intricate a nature, I hesitated to tell Mabel, my wife, lest I should draw her into that web of doubt, uncertainty, and grim tragedy?

I had watched the columns of the Times each day to discover the advertised message promised by Kirk; but there had been none. I now saw how I had been as wax in the hands of that clever, smooth-spoken cosmopolitan. I believed in men’s honesty, a most foolish confidence in these degenerate days, when morality is sneered at, and honesty is declared openly to be “the worst policy.”

Alas! in this dear old England of ours truth and justice are to-day rapidly disappearing. Now that Mammon rules, that divorce is a means of notoriety, and that charity begins abroad with Mansion House funds for undeserving foreigners, while our starving unemployed clamour in their thousands for bread, the old order of things has, alas! changed.

The honest man – though, be it said, there are still honest, sterling men in business and out of it – goes to the wall and is dubbed a fool; while the master-thief, the smug swindler, the sweater, and the promoter of bogus companies may pay his money and obtain his baronetcy, or his seat in the House of Lords, and thus hall-mark himself with respectability.

While money talks, morality is an absent factor in life, and truth is but a travesty. Glance only at the list of subscribers to a Mansion House Fund, the very basis of which is the desire of the Lord Mayor who may happen to be in office to get his baronetcy, while its supporters are in the main part self-advertisers, or donations are given in order to establish an unstable confidence and extend a false credit. Thus, even in our charities, we have become humbugs, because the worship of the Golden Calf has bred cant, hypocrisy, and blatant self-confidence, which must ere long be the cause of our beloved country’s downfall beneath the iron-heel of far-seeing, business-like Germany.

Such reflections as these ran through my mind as that night I sat in the train watching the lights as we neared the great industrial centre on the Clyde. I was trying to peer into the future, but I only saw before me a misty horizon of unutterable despair.

I longed to meet Ethelwynn Greer, and put to her certain questions. Was it not a complete enigma, startling and inscrutable, that she, having seen her beloved father lying lifeless, should utter no word – even to young Langton, to whom she was evidently devoted? That fact was utterly incomprehensible.

At last the train slowed and drew into the great echoing station. On alighting I gave my bag to a porter and entered the big Caledonian Hotel adjoining. I had stayed there on previous occasions, and knew its huge dining-room, its long corridors, and its wide ramifications.

I registered in the name of Lamb, deeming it best to conceal my presence, and while writing in the book, scanned the page for Martin’s name. It was not, however, there. I turned back to earlier arrivals that day, but with no better result. So I ascended in the lift to my room on the second floor.

Of course, it was quite within the bounds of possibility that the false Professor might use yet another name if he wished to avoid being followed from Edinburgh. Besides, I had noticed that just as at the North British at Edinburgh, so here, telegrams were exhibited upon a board, and could be taken. Therefore, if a wire came in the name of Martin, he could quite easily claim it.

After a wash I wandered about the hotel, through the lounge, smoking-room, and the other of the public apartments. Yet how could I recognise a man who was disguised, and whom I had never seen?

I was placed at a disadvantage from the very first by never having met this man who had posed as the dead Professor. Yet with the knowledge that Kirk desired particularly to see him, I felt that there was a probability of their meeting, and that, if only I remained wary and watchful, I should come across, amid the hundreds of persons staying there, the mysterious dweller in Bedford Park.

From my arrival at eleven till half-past one I remained on the alert, but saw no one I knew. Therefore I retired to bed, thoroughly worn-out by that constant vigil. Yet I was in no way disheartened. The false Professor had started from Edinburgh for that destination, and was, I felt confident, staying there under another name. It only lay with me to unmask him, or to wait until the pair met clandestinely, and then to demand to know the truth.

Surely in all the annals of crime there had never been one so surrounded by complex circumstances as the tragedy of Sussex Place, and assuredly, too, no innocent man had been more ingeniously misled than my unfortunate self.

Next day, from eight o’clock in the morning till late at night, I idled about the big hotel, ever anxious and ever watchful. I kept an eye upon each arrival and each departure.

Then I became slowly and against my will, convinced that the false Professor had not come to that hotel, but had put up somewhere else, well knowing that he could obtain the telegraphic message from Kirk whenever he cared to step in and take it from the board.

Again, even though at the heels of the conspirators, was I yet being outwitted – a fact which became the more impressed upon me on the third day of my futile expectancy.

Hourly I watched that telegraph-board, intending to annex quietly any message addressed to Martin, and act upon any appointment it contained.

But, alas! my watchfulness remained unrewarded.

Twice there had arrived men slightly resembling the dead Professor, clean-shaven and active, but by careful observation I discovered that one was a commercial traveller whose samples had been left below in the station, and the other was a well-known iron merchant of Walsall.

The false Professor, the man who was plainly in association with the mysterious Kirk, was clearly in Glasgow, yet how was it possible for me to do more than I was doing towards his unmasking?

Put to yourself that problem, you, my friend, for whom I have chronicled this plain, unvarnished story of what actually occurred to me in the year of grace 1907, and inquire of yourself its solution.

“Who killed Professor Greer?”

Chapter Fourteen

A Remarkable Truth

The morning was cold, with fine driving rain, when at eight o’clock I alighted from a hansom before my own house in Bath Road, and entered with my latch-key. In the dining-room I found Annie, the housemaid, in the act of lighting the fire, but turning suddenly upon me with surprise, she exclaimed:

“Oh, sir! You gave me quite a turn! We didn’t expect to see you back again just yet.”

“Why not?” I inquired, with some surprise. “We thought you were with the mistress, sir.”

“With my wife. What do you mean?”

“Mrs Holford obeyed your telegram, sir, and has left for Italy.”

“For Italy!” I gasped. “Where’s Miss Gwen? Go and ask her if she can see me at once.” And I followed the maid upstairs.

In a few moments Gwen Raeburn, my wife’s sister, a young, pretty, dark girl of seventeen, who wore a big black bow in her hair, came out of her room wrapped in a blue kimono.

“Why, Harry!” she cried. “What’s the matter? I thought Mabel had gone to join you.”

“I’ve just come down from Glasgow, where I’ve been on business,” I explained. “Where is Mabel?”

“I don’t know, except that I saw her off from Victoria at eleven the day before yesterday.”

“But why has she gone?”

“To meet you,” replied the girl. “The morning before last, at a few minutes past eight, she received a telegram signed by you, urging her to meet you at the Hôtel Grande Bretagne in Florence at the earliest possible moment. Therefore she obeyed it at once, and left by the eleven o’clock train. It was a terrible rush to get her off, I can tell you. But haven’t you been in Florence?”

“No, I’ve been in Scotland,” I repeated. “Did you read the telegram she received?”

“Yes; it was very brief, but to the point. Mabel was annoyed that you had not told her the reason you had gone abroad without explanation. She feared that, in view of your preoccupied manner of late, something disastrous had happened to you. That’s why she left so hurriedly. I wanted to go with her, but she wouldn’t allow me.”

“I wish you had gone, Gwen,” I said. “There’s some plot here – some deep and treacherous conspiracy.”

“Why, what has happened?”

“A lot has happened,” I said. “You shall know it all later on. At present I haven’t time to explain. I suppose the telegram isn’t left about anywhere?”

“Mabel took it with her.”

“You didn’t notice whence it had been despatched?” I asked.