The Red Room

Thereupon Professor Greer shook my hand, with a parting appeal to me to preserve silence.

“You will, no doubt, meet your wife ere long, and she will explain much which is to you still a mystery. Remember that her devotion to you was the cause of her absence. She believed that you were in danger. That story was told her to keep her away from you, and thus draw you off the inquiry in which we feared you might be only too successful. Adieu, Mr Holford! When I return, in a week’s time, I hope you will come and have a further chat with me. In the meantime, I can only beg you to forgive me for being the unwilling means of causing you either horror, annoyance, or anxiety.”

And, with a hurried good-bye to the others, he turned and left the room.

“A point upon which I require elucidation,” I said, turning to Kirk, “is the reason why you and those other men were so inquisitive regarding the new Eckhardt tyre.”

“Why I called to see the tyre was simple enough,” he said. “Max Leftwich was posing as the inventor of the tyre in question, and thereby trying to disguise his real profession of German secret agent. But as I had come across him in Berlin three years before in the guise of a small money-lender, I doubted his inventive genius. I came to you in order to examine the Eckhardt tyre, and I satisfied myself that Leftwich’s tyre was a mere worthless imitation. My assistants also came to your garage for the same purpose, just as I predicted they would. Leftwich had opened a depot in Charing Cross Road for the sale of motor accessories, and the ‘improved Eckhardt tyre’ was one of the inventions he claimed to be his.”

“But you also had a further motive?” I suggested.

“Certainly, Holford,” was his quick reply. “I confess that I had watched you for a year, and I felt that I could rely upon you. I wished to enlist your services as one of my assistants, and to initiate you into work for which the Government would pay well. It would assuredly have been worth your while to leave your business to the care of your manager, Mr Pelham, and take service in the department of which I hold control. But, remember, when I asked you to come here, even I was deceived. I believed that my friend Greer, with whom I had had a slight quarrel a few weeks before, was dead. When I found what had really occurred, I saw that the only danger lay in your discovering the truth. Hence all that tangled chain of subterfuges.”

“But surely the Professor might, even now, be charged with murder – or at least with manslaughter!” I remarked.

“My father may, Mr Holford, if you do not preserve his terrible secret!” cried Ethelwynn. “Upon you alone depends all the future!”

Once again I demanded the truth concerning Mabel and news of her whereabouts, but all Kirk would tell me was what Greer had already said – only a promise that we should meet, and that when we did she would make full and ample explanation.

I returned to Bath Road utterly bewildered, and, seated with Gwen, related to her the whole facts from the first, just as I have here recounted them.

She sat staring at me open-mouthed.

“But where is Mabel?” she cried in alarm. “The Professor and the others have returned from abroad, yet she is still absent. Will they accord you no satisfaction?”

“None!” I replied with a weary sigh. “I don’t know, after all, whether to accept what has been related to me, or whether to disbelieve it.”

“The fact that the police refused to inquire into your story, Harry, seems sufficient proof that this man Kirk is a powerful and influential person. Indeed, does it not tend to confirm the story that the Professor did not die, and that he really killed the German in self-defence?”

I admitted that it did. And then I made up my mind that, as Kirk would give me no satisfaction concerning Mabel, I, on my part, would decline to enter into any bond of secrecy.

My wife was worth far more to me than any international complication. What was Germany’s wrath at being foiled in her dastardly attempt to obtain the secret of the new steel, to Mabel’s honour and her love?

Two lagging days had gone by.

Kershaw Kirk had called in the evening about seven o’clock, but I refused to see him. I sent word by Annie that I was out driving a car.

“Tell Mr Holford to come in and see me the instant he returns. I must speak to him at the earliest possible moment,” he had said. And this was the message which the maid had brought to me when the astute official of the British Government had left.

Just before ten I entered Kirk’s close little den. He was seated in his bead slippers and old velvet coat, while behind him stood the grey parrot, which screeched loudly as Miss Kirk opened the door to admit me.

Seated opposite him, near the fire, was Leonard Langton, pale-faced and grave.

“Ah, Holford!” cried Kirk, springing from his chair, sharp-eyed and alert. “I called on you some time ago. I wanted to – to make an announcement to you,” he added, with a slight catch in his voice, I thought.

“Of what?”

He took from his table a long telegram. I recognised that it was from the Continent by the fact that it was on green “tape” pasted upon a form. Attached to it was a square, dark red label, bearing the words, “Government telegram: with priority.”

“Read that!” he said simply.

Chapter Thirty Two

The Problem Solved

I scanned it through – then held my breath. It was from Angoulême, in Central France, and signed by somebody named Croxton, evidently a person in the secret employ of our Government. The telegram was a jumble of cipher figures and letters, but above, written in ink, were their equivalents in plain English. The message read:

“Details are as follow: Professor Greer left Paris by the ‘Rapide’ at 9:29 last night for Bordeaux. He occupied a first-class compartment alone, and at Poitiers was seen by the chef du train asleep. Soon after passing Moussac, towards Angoulême, two men in the adjoining compartment were startled at hearing three pistol shots in rapid succession. They looked out, and saw a man open the carriage door and leap from the train. The train was stopped by pulling the communication-cord, whereon the Professor was found dead on the floor of the carriage. His assailant had evidently entered the carriage at Ruffec, the junction for La Rochelle. The passengers instituted a search back along the line towards Moussac, where they found the murderer lying in a ditch with his neck broken. Both bodies have been brought here to Angoulême, and by papers upon the assassin he has been identified as a German named Henke, lately living at Hillside Cottage, Epping. Have had the body photographed, and sending you print for identification. Am making arrangements for sending the late Professor’s body to London. Wire further instructions.”

“What does this mean?” I gasped.

“We know the man Henke,” Kirk replied. “He was a German secret agent, who has lately been engaged with a number of others in making a complete survey north of London. He was brother-in-law to Leftwich. It was he who entered the house in Sussex Place to make certain that his relative was dead, and who, on finding Ethelwynn there, attacked her so savagely, believing he had killed her. Finding that he had not, he evidently followed the Professor, and, alas! avenged Leftwich’s death.”

“Then the poor Professor is dead?” I said, amazed.

“Yes,” sighed Langton. “Ethelwynn is now beside herself with grief. I have just left her, having broken the dreadful news to her.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Kirk, “it’s surely a dark and bitter revenge – rendered all the worse, Holford, by one vivid fact.”

“What is that?”

“The fact that Doctor Flynn – who was born in Germany, though of British parents, and was an intimate friend of Leftwich – suspecting the truth, told the German’s brother-in-law, with this tragic result.”

“Then Flynn is to blame for Greer’s death!” I cried.

“Undoubtedly,” was Kirk’s answer. “Poor Greer!” he added, “He was an old and dear friend of mine. I never suspected that he would be followed abroad, or I would have gone with him. Flynn was no doubt privy to the attempt to be made to secure revenge.”

“Where is Flynn?”

“Gone abroad,” replied Langton. “As soon as I told him what Mr Kirk had said over the telephone, he packed some of his traps, and, making a lame excuse that he had to visit some friends in Germany, he drove to Charing Cross.”

I stood gazing at the pair before me, my thoughts too full for mere words.

Professor Greer’s end was, indeed, an unexpected and extraordinary one.

That night, however, proved full of surprises, for when I returned home I found Mabel, sweet, eager and happy, anxiously awaiting me.

I noticed she seemed pale, weary and travel-worn, but as she threw herself into my ready arms with a cry of joy at our reunion, she sobbed to me to forgive her for doubting me.

“I don’t understand you, darling,” I said. “I never doubted you for one moment.”

“Ah!” she sobbed, “you do not know all I’ve suffered in these long weeks we have been parted.”

“No,” I said. “Tell me, dearest, tell me all.”

Then, in broken sentences, smiling now and then through her tears, she explained how, on receipt of the false telegram, she had at once gone to Italy, where she was met by Kirk, who told her that I had unfortunately been accused of the crime of forgery, of which I was innocent, and that I was in hiding. He promised, if for the time she concealed her name, he would take her to me.

They went to Florence, only to find that I was not there. Thence they went to Faenza, on the Adriatic side of the Apennines, where she was handed over to the care of Pietro Merli, who conducted her about the Continent under the same pretext – always in search of myself, and always preventing her from sending a message home, for fear, the Italian had said, that the English police should be placed on the track. In Vienna, Kirk again met her, Pietro having returned to England.