The Red Room

“You are not a detective. If you were, I should not seek your aid,” he snapped, as he led the way to the door and switched off the lights. “I know you think it rather strange that I have not called a doctor and the police, and had a post-mortem, and allowed the newspaper reporters to ‘work up’ a big sensation; but, as I’ve already told you, our success depends upon absolute secrecy. The affair is a startling one to you, no doubt; but if you were aware of what the tragedy really means you would be dumbfounded. Why, the newspapers could make a worldwide sensation of it if only they got at the true facts; but they never will, I assure you – never.”

“Then even I may not know the true facts?” I asked, as I stood with him again in the boudoir.

“As far as the tragedy is concerned, you already know them. They are just as I have told you. But there are other facts – facts concerning myself and also the Professor – which I am not permitted to divulge. They must,” he added, “remain a secret.”

“Well – if you are not perfectly frank with me, Mr Kirk,” I protested, “I cannot see how I can regard you as a sincere friend. This is a serious and complicated problem, in which you require my assistance in an endeavour to seek a solution. How can I form any conclusions or help you if you deliberately hold back from me some of the circumstances?”

“I have held back none,” was his hasty response – “at least, none which have any bearing whatever upon the tragedy. It is of myself and my own connection with Greer that I am speaking. I was the first person called, before there was even a suspicion of anything wrong. The fact is, the dead man trusted me implicitly.”

“And, according to your showing, certain enemies of yours suspected the truth – that your friendship for the Professor was only feigned.”

My companion looked me straight in the face with his narrow-set eyes, and replied:

“My dear Mr Holford, what my enemies say was, I admit, perfectly correct. I have sought to conceal nothing. Greer believed that I was his friend, but I hated him. I had good cause to do so!”

The man’s crafty eyes again met mine, and I saw in them an expression which I had never noticed before. Was it possible that he was the unknown assassin, and was only misleading me by clever and cunning devices?

I recollected that he had told me that the Professor had stolen from him some valuable secret. Well, if he did not fear the crime of retaliation being brought home to him, why did he not go openly and lay the facts before the police? His evasive replies and thin excuses appeared to be utterly ridiculous. In my foolish ignorance I still believed Kershaw Kirk to be an ordinary individual, much like myself. The remarkable truth had not then been revealed to me – as it was later.

We descended to the dining-room, where Antonio and his brother Pietro were still watching beside the couch whereon lay the poor girl who had met with such a strange and inexplicable fate.

Kirk again knelt beside her, and for a long time searched for any wound she might bear. But he found none.

“Remember, Antonio, no person must enter this house under any pretext whatever,” my companion ordered. “You are responsible.”

“No one shall know anything, signore,” replied the man. “Morgan and the maids are all in ignorance – for you, signore, kept it so cleverly from them.”

“A woman never can keep a secret,” Kirk answered sharply, “and if we are to fathom the mystery of your master’s death not a word must leak out. You know what I have told you.”

“I recollect, signore,” the man replied. And, using the Italian oath, he said, “I have promised you, upon the tomb of my sainted mother.”

“Then close this room, and with your brother keep a watchful vigil until to-morrow.”

And we both went out, and were soon running in the car back towards Bedford Park.

Arrived at his house, he insisted that I should enter for a “night-cap,” it being then just past three o’clock. Therefore, reluctantly, I accompanied him within.

In his study a tantalus-stand and glasses were upon the table. He had thrown off his overcoat, and was about to pour me out some whisky, when the telephone bell suddenly rang. He put down the glass, and, walking to the instrument, answered the summons.

“Hulloa? Yes?” he said.

Then, as he listened intently, his face blanched. He spoke some quick words in German, which, unfortunately, I could not follow. They seemed like instructions.

Again he listened, but suddenly whatever he heard so appalled him that the receiver dropped from his thin, nerveless fingers, and with a low, hoarse cry he staggered across to his big grandfather chair, near which I was standing, and sank into it, rigid, staring, open-mouthed.

If ever guilt were written upon a man’s face, it assuredly was written upon that of Kershaw Kirk at that moment.

Chapter Five

Certain Suspicions Strengthened

To Mabel, my wife, I said nothing. In the circumstances, I deemed silence golden.

Kirk’s attitude at the telephone had filled me with suspicion.

During the hours I spent in bed before the dawn I lay thinking. The problem was utterly inexplicable, the more so now that the dead man’s daughter was also dead.

I was convinced, as I lay there in the darkness, that there was something very suspicious in the fact that Kirk, who seemed to rule the household, would not allow the police to have any knowledge of what had occurred. Indeed, my own position was somewhat unenviable, for, being aware that a murder had been committed, was I not legally bound to give information? Was I not liable to prosecution if I failed to do so?

The mystery surrounding Kershaw Kirk had increased rather than diminished in that final quarter of an hour I had spent with him as he had sat staring straight into the fire, uttering scarce a word.

What had been told him over the telephone had caused an entire change in his manner. Previously he had been dictatorial and defiant. He was now cringing, crushed, terror-stricken.

The grim scenes I had witnessed surged through my brain. The mystery of it all had gripped my senses. Carefully I analysed each event, trying to discern some light as to its cause and motive. But I was not a professional detective. This was the first time I had found myself mixed up in a crime by which human life had been lost.

That the death of Professor Greer was no ordinary crime of violence I had quickly recognised. There was some subtle motive both in the crime itself and in the supposed presence of the Professor in Edinburgh, whereas in reality he was already lying dead in his own laboratory.

Those instructions to his daughter, which seemed to have been written after his departure from King’s Cross, also formed an enigma in themselves. The dead man had actually sought the assistance of his worst enemy!

Yet, when I weighed the circumstances as a whole calmly and coolly, I saw that if the unknown person to whom the Professor had signalled on that fateful night could be found a very great point would be gained towards the solution of the problem.

The pulling up and down of the drawing-room blind was, no doubt, in order to inform some person waiting without of his journey north. Was that person who received the signal afterwards the assassin?

Yet the fact that the crime was committed behind locked doors, that both the victim and the assassin had to pass within a few feet of where Miss Ethelwynn was seated, and that into the unfortunate Professor’s face some terribly corrosive fluid had been dashed, formed a problem which held me mystified.

There was something uncanny in the whole inexplicable affair. I now realised for the first time how complete was the mystery of the Professor’s death, even apart from the other facts of his signals and his journey north.

Kirk, this dealer in secrets, admittedly posed as a friend of the family. Greer trusted him. To him Ethelwynn had fled for assistance at the first suspicion of anything being wrong. Therefore would it not have been easier for him than for anyone else to enter the house in secret and kill the man who had stolen from him that mysterious secret?

Yet, try how I would, I was unable to rid myself of the grave conviction that my new acquaintance was cognisant of more than he had told me. He was naturally a reserved man, it was true; yet there was an air of cosmopolitanism about him which spoke mutely of the adventurer.

His refusal to allow a doctor to see the Professor’s daughter was nothing short of culpable. Had Antonio, that sly, crafty Italian, to whom I had taken such instinctive dislike, summoned a doctor at once, it was quite possible that the poor girl’s life might have been saved.

But why had she returned to the house in a manner so secret? Why had she crept into the dining-room and removed her hat? It would almost seem as though she had returned for good, for if she had intended to go back to her aunt’s she would not have taken off her hat and laid it aside.

And why had she done so in the dining-room, of all places? Why had she not ascended to her own room? And why, most of all, had she not summoned Antonio?

Was it because of fear of him?

Kirk and Antonio were friends. That I had detected from the very first. The Italian was polite, urbane, servile, yet I saw that the bow was only a shallow make-believe. Alone together, the pair would, no doubt, stand upon an equal footing.

The reason she had returned home was mysterious enough, yet the greater problem was the reason why she also had been struck down and the same corrosive liquid flung into her fair countenance.

I could not think that Kirk was responsible for this second assassination, for, unless Antonio had lied, it had been committed at the very hour when I had been seated with my mysterious neighbour only a few doors away from my own house.

So, as you may readily imagine, I was still sorely troubled when at last the maid brought me my hot water and I rose to dress.

I quite saw now that the reason why Kirk had called to inspect the new Eckhardt tyre was merely in order to make my acquaintance. Yet it was certainly curious that he should have predicted the visits of the two other men for the same purpose. After breakfast I went, as usual, to the garage, but my mind was still full of the events of the previous night.