The Red Room

This tension of nerves and constant longing for the return of the one for whom I held such a great and all-absorbing love was now telling upon my health. I ate little, and the mirror revealed how pale, careworn, and haggard I had become. Since the dawn of the New Year I was, alas! a changed man. In two months I had aged fully ten years.

From inquiries I made of men interested in science and in chemistry I had discovered how great a man was the dead Professor, and how beneficial to mankind had been certain of his discoveries. Fate – or is it some world spirit of tragic-comedy? – plays strange pranks with human lives now and then, and surely nothing more singular ever happened in our London life of to-day than what I have already narrated in these pages.

And to that thin, grey-faced neighbour of mine – the man who led a double life – was due the blame for it all. Though I made every endeavour and every inquiry, I could not learn what was his profession. That he was a man of means, a constant traveller, and well known in clubland, was all the information I could obtain.

You will wonder, perhaps, why I did not go again to Whitehall Court and force the truth from the fellow’s lips. Well, I hesitated, because in every argument I had had with him he had always won and always turned the tables upon myself. I had made a promise which, however justifiable my action, I had, nevertheless, broken. I had denounced him to the police, believing that I should see him arrested and charged. Yet, on the contrary, the authorities refused to lift a finger against him.

What could I think? What, indeed, would you have thought in the circumstances? How would you have acted?

One morning I had gone out early with Drake, trying the chassis of a new “twenty-four,” and finding ourselves in front of the grey old cathedral at Chichester, we pulled up at the ancient “Dolphin” to have luncheon. My mind had been full of Mabel all the way, and though I had driven I had paid little or no attention to the car’s defects. Dick Drake, motor enthusiast as he was, probably regarded my preoccupied manner as curious, but he made no comment, though he had no doubt noted all the defects himself.

I had lunched in the big upstairs room – a noble apartment, as well known to travellers in the old coaching days as to the modern motorist – and had passed along into another room, where I lit a cigarette and stretched myself lazily before the fire.

A newspaper lay at hand, and I took it up. In my profession I have but little leisure to read anything save the motor-journals; therefore, except a glance at the evening paper, I, like hundreds of other busy men, seldom troubled myself with the news of the day.

I was smoking and scanning the columns of that morning’s journal when my eyes fell upon a heading which caused me to start in surprise. The words read, “Steel Discovery: New High-Speed Metal with Seven Times Cutting Power of Old.”

The short article read as follows:

“Few prophecies have been more quickly justified than that of Professor Greer at the Royal Institution on December 16th last. He then said:

”‘As to Mr Carnegie’s prophecy on the decadence of British steel metallurgy, this exists only in the imagination of that gentleman. So far as quality is concerned, Britain is still first in the race for supremacy.

”‘I am strongly of opinion that in a very short time the best high-speed steel will be a back number. It is probable that a year hence there will be on the market British steel with a quadruple cutting power of any now known to metallurgy.’

“The prophecy has come true. Professor Greer, lecturing again at the Birmingham Town Hall last night, stated that the firm of Edwards and Sutton, of the Meersbrook Works, Sheffield, of which Sir Mark Edwards is the head, have, after his lengthened experiments, placed on the market a steel with from three to seven times the cutting power of existing high-speed steel, and which, in contradistinction to present material, can be hardened in water, oil, or blast.

“The new steel, whose cutting power is almost incredible, said the Professor, will not call for any alteration in present machinery.”

The impostor had actually had the audacity to lecture before a Birmingham audience! His bold duplicity was incredible.

I re-read that remarkable statement, and judged that this new process of his must have been purchased by the great firm of Edwards and Sutton, whose steel was of world repute. His was, I presumed, an improvement upon the Bessemer process.

That a man could have the impudence to pass himself off as Greer was beyond my comprehension. As Waynflete Professor at Oxford he would, I saw, be well known, even if he did not go much into society. And yet he had stood upon the platform in the Town Hall of Birmingham and boldly announced a discovery made by the man whose identity he had so audaciously assumed.

This action of the impostor, who had no doubt sold the Professor’s secret at a high figure to a well-known firm, absolutely staggered belief.

I called Drake, mounted upon the ugly chassis again, and together we sped post-haste back to London. At ten that night I was in the Grand Hotel at Birmingham, and half an hour later I called at the house of a certain Alderman named Pooley, who was a member of the society before which the bogus Professor had lectured on the previous evening.

I had some little difficulty in inducing him to see me at that late hour. He was a busy solicitor, and his servant referred me to his office in Bull Street, where, she said, he would see me in the morning. But, being pushful, Mr Pooley at last consented to see me.

“Yes,” he said, as I sat with him in his dining-room, “it is quite true that Professor Greer lectured before us last night, and made a most interesting announcement – one which seems to have caused a good deal of stir in the world of metallurgy. The papers were full of it to-day.”

“I understood the Professor was abroad,” I remarked rather lamely.

“So he was. He came home specially to fulfil a long-standing engagement. He promised us to lecture, and gave us the date as far back as November last.”

“Do you know where he arrived from?” I inquired.

“Yes. He dined with us here before the lecture, and stayed with us the night. He told us at dinner that he had just returned from Roumania.”

“Then he did not leave Birmingham until this morning!” I cried. “Ah, how I wish I had known! Have you any idea where he has gone?”

“I went with him to the station this morning, and he took a ticket to Sheffield – to visit Sir Mark Edwards, I believe. He met at the station a friend who had been to the lecture and who had stayed at the Grand that night. He was introduced to me as Mr Kirk. Do you know him?”

“Kirk?” I gasped. “Yes; a tall, thin, grey-haired man – Mr Kershaw Kirk.”

“Yes. They travelled together,” said the Alderman. “It seemed as though Kirk came from London to meet the Professor, who had returned by the Hook of Holland to Harwich, and came on by the through carriage to Birmingham.”

“And you believe that Kirk has gone with the Professor to visit Sir Mark Edwards?” I exclaimed eagerly.

“I think so. If you sent a letter to the Professor at Sir Mark’s address, it’s quite probable that he would get it.”

“Had you ever met the Professor before?” I inquired.

“No, never. Of course I knew him well by repute.”

“Did he mention that Edwards and Sutton were old friends of his?”

“I gathered that they were not. He had simply concluded an arrangement with them for working his process as a matter of business. Indeed, he mentioned that Sir Mark Edwards had invited him for a few days.”

“Then they are not friends of long standing?” I asked.

“Probably not. But – well, why do you ask such curious questions as these, Mr – Holford? What, indeed, is the motive of all this inquiry? The Professor is a well-known man, and you could easily approach him yourself,” the keen solicitor remarked.

“Yes, probably so. But my inquiry is in the Professor’s own interest,” I said, because I had to make my story good. “As a matter of fact, I have learnt of an attempt to steal the secret of his process, and I’m acting for his protection. When my inquiries are complete, I shall go to him and place the whole matter before him.”

“Your profession is not that of a detective?” he suggested, with a laugh.

“No; I’m a motor engineer,” I explained bluntly. “I know nothing, and care less, about detectives and their ways.”

Then I apologised for disturbing him at that hour and made my way back in the cab that had brought me to the centre of the city.

I left New Street Station at two o’clock in the morning – cold, wet, and cheerless – and at half-past four was in the Midland Hotel at Sheffield, sleepy and fagged.

The night-porter knew nothing of Sir Mark Edwards’ address; therefore I had to wait until eight o’clock, when some more intelligent member of the hotel staff came on duty.

Everyone of whom I inquired, however, seemed ignorant; hence I took a cab and drove to the great works of the firm – a huge, grimy place, with smoky chimneys and heaps of slag, an establishment employing several thousand hands, and one of the largest, if not the largest, in Hallamshire. Here I was informed that Sir Mark resided thirty miles distant, at Alverton Hall, close to the edge of Bulwell Common, famed for its golf links.

Therefore at ten o’clock I took train there, and, finding a fly at the station, drove direct to the Hall to face and denounce the man who was an accomplice of assassins, if not the assassin himself, and a bold, defiant impostor.

The fly, after traversing a country road for a mile or so, suddenly entered the lodge-gates and proceeded up a splendid avenue of high bare elms, until we drew up at the entrance to a fine old Elizabethan mansion, the door of which was thrown open by a liveried manservant.

I held my breath for a second. My chase had been a long and stern one.

Then I inquired for the honoured and distinguished guest – who I had already ascertained at the works in Sheffield was supposed to be staying there – and was ushered with great ceremony into the wide, old-fashioned hall.

At last the impostor was near his unmasking. At last I would be able to prove to the world who killed Professor Greer!