The Red Room

The girl held her breath at this allegation. That mark upon her cheek condemned her. Even her lover, for a moment, could not reply.

“Ah,” he said at last, “the loss of Mrs Holford has upset you, and causes you to make all sorts of wild and ridiculous statements, it seems. Kirk says they would not listen to you at Scotland Yard – and no wonder!”

“Then you know Kirk, eh – you who denied all knowledge of him when we first met!” I cried. “It was he who placed the poor Professor’s remains in the furnace in the laboratory, for from the ashes I recovered various scraps of his clothing which are now in my possession.”

“Rubbish, my dear sir!” laughed the young man. “You don’t know Kirk – or who he is!”

“I know him to be an adventurer who has two places of residence,” I said.

“But an adventurer is not necessarily a scoundrel,” Langton replied. “Many a good-hearted wanderer becomes a cosmopolitan and an adventurer, but he still retains all the traits and all the honour of a gentleman.”

“Not in Kirk’s case!” I cried.

“You’ve evidently quarrelled with him,” remarked Langton.

“I’ve quarrelled with him in so far as I mean to expose the secret assassination of Professor Greer and those who, for their own purposes, are making pretence that the dead man is still alive,” I answered boldly.

“By the latter, I take it, you mean ourselves?” observed the dead man’s daughter.

“I include all who lie, well knowing that the Professor is dead and all traces of his body have been destroyed,” was my meaning response.

“What’s this story of yours about Miss Greer presenting an appearance of death?” asked Langton. “Tell me – it is the first time I’ve heard this.” In a few brief sentences I told them of our discovery in the dining-room, and of the removal of the girl in a cab on that foggy night.

At my words both looked genuinely puzzled.

“What do you say to that?” asked her lover.

“I know nothing – nothing whatever of it!” she declared. “I can only think that Mr Holford must be dreaming.”

“Surely not when, with my own hands, I held a mirror to your lips to obtain traces of your breath!” I exclaimed. “Ask Antonio. He will tell you how he and his brother Pietro placed you in a cab at Kirk’s orders.”

“At Kirk’s orders?” echoed the young man. “Ask him for yourself,” I said.

They were both full of surprise and anxiety at what I had alleged.

Was it possible that I had been mistaken in Ethelwynn’s attitude, and that she genuinely believed that her father still lived? But that could not be, for had she not seen him dead with her own eyes? No. The girl, aided by her lover, was carrying out a cunningly-devised scheme effectively to seal my lips.

My wife Mabel had, before her disappearance, been in communication with the impostor whom Ethelwynn had apparently taken under her protection. This was a point that was most puzzling. Could this girl and my wife have been secretly acquainted? If so, then it was more than probable that she might have knowledge of Mabel’s whereabouts.

Again I referred to the loss of my wife, declaring that if I found her I would willingly forgo all further investigation into the Professor’s death.

The handsome girl exchanged glances with her lover, glances which showed me plainly that they were acting in accordance with some premeditated plan. Leonard Langton was a sharp, shrewd, far-seeing man, or he would never have held the appointment of private secretary to Sir Albert Oppenheim.

“Well, Mr Holford,” he said, “why don’t you speak candidly and openly? You are, I take it, eager to make terms with your enemies, eh?”

“But who are my enemies?” I cried blankly. “As far as I’m aware, I’ve made none!”

“A man arouses enmity often without intention,” was his reply. “I cannot, of course, tell who are these enemies of yours, but it is evident from your statement the other day at Wimpole Street that they are responsible for your wife’s disappearance.”

“Well,” I said, “you are right. I am open to make terms if Mabel is given back at once to me.”

“And what are they?” asked Ethelwynn, whose very eagerness condemned her.

“Pardon me, Miss Greer,” I said rather hastily, “but I cannot discern in what manner my matrimonial affairs can interest you.”

“Oh – er – well,” she laughed nervously, “of course they don’t really – only your wife’s disappearance has struck me as very remarkable.”

“No, Miss Greer,” I said, “not really so remarkable as it at first appears. My own inquisitiveness was the cause of her being enticed away, so that I might be drawn off the investigation I had undertaken – the inquiry into who killed Professor Greer.”

Her cheeks went paler, and she bit her lip. Her whole attitude was that of a woman aware of a bitter and tragic truth, yet, for her own honour, she dared not divulge it. She undoubtedly held the secret – the secret of her father’s death. Yet, for some purpose that was yet a complete enigma, she was protecting the impostor who had stepped into the dead man’s shoes.

The pair had brought me down there in order to entrap me – most probably a plot of Kirk’s. Their intention was to mislead and deceive me, and at the same time to secure my silence. But in my frantic anxiety and constant dread I was not easily entrapped. I had seen through the transparency of Kirk’s attitude, and I had likewise proved to my own satisfaction that, however much of the truth Leonard Langton knew, the girl of the innocent eyes was feigning an ignorance that was culpable, for within her heart she knew the truth of her father’s tragic end, even though she calmly asserted that he still lived and was in the best of health.

I had believed on entering that room, the windows of which looked out upon that grey-green wintry sea, that I should learn something concerning my dear wife, that I should perhaps obtain a clue to her whereabouts.

But as I fixed my eyes upon those of Ethelwynn Greer, I saw in them a guilty knowledge, and by it knew that in that direction hope was futile.

True, she had sounded me as to what undertaking I was ready to give, but the whole situation was so horrible and so bewildering that I could not bring myself to make any compact that would prevent Greer’s assassin being exposed.

So, instead, I sat full of chagrin, telling the pair much which held them in fear and apprehension.

It was evident that I knew more than they had believed I did, and that Langton was filled with regret that he had invited me there.

What, I wondered, could possibly be Ethelwynn’s motive in concealing her father’s death? I recollected how the assassin must have brushed past her in the Red Room to enter the laboratory on that fatal night, and that he must have again passed her on leaving.

Did she awake and recognise him, or had she herself been an accomplice in securing her father’s sudden and tragic end? Who could tell? In that startling suggestion I found much food for deep reflection.

Chapter Twenty Six

I Scent the Impostor

A whole fortnight went past. Mabel’s silence was inexplicable.

The house in Sussex Place was still in the hands of the caretaker, and, though I watched both Doctor Flynn and Leonard Langton in secret, the results of my vigilance were nil.

I was in despair. Refused assistance by Scotland Yard, and treated as an enemy by Kershaw Kirk, I could only sit with Gwen at home and form a thousand wild conjectures.

Advertisements for news of Mabel had brought no word of response. Indeed, it seemed much as though the theory of those two detectives was the correct one, namely, that she had left me of her own will, and did not intend to return. Gwen, indeed, suggested this one day, but I made pretence of scouting it. Mabel’s mother, who now lived up in Aberdeenshire, had written two letters, and I had been compelled to reply, to tell a lie and say that she was away at Cheltenham.

My business I neglected sadly, for nowadays I seldom went to the garage. Kirk was, I understood, living in Whitehall Court, but I did not call upon him. What was the use? I had tried every means of learning where Mabel was, but, alas! there seemed a conspiracy of silence against me. I had left no effort unexerted. Yet all had been in vain.

Antonio had, according to Ethelwynn, joined “the Professor” in Hungary. Was not that, in itself, sufficient evidence of collusion? As for Pietro, inquiry I made in the Euston Road showed that he had not yet returned to England.

Many times I felt impelled to go out to Buda-Pesth and endeavour to trace the pair. But I hesitated, because, finding Ethelwynn’s statements unreliable in some particulars, I feared to accept what she said as the truth. Would it not be to her interest to mislead me and send me off upon a wild-goose chase?

No man in the whole of our great feverish London was so full of constant anxiety, frantic fear, and breathless bewilderment as myself. Ah, how I existed through those grey, gloomy March days I cannot explain. The mystery of it all was inscrutable.

I should, I knew, be able to satisfy myself as to poor Mabel’s fate if only I could clear up the mystery of who killed Professor Greer.