The Red Room

Kirk had arranged to call for me at eleven and return to Sussex Place, where he intended to search for any finger-marks left by the assassin. Eleven o’clock struck, but he did not arrive. In patience I waited until one, and then returned home to luncheon, as was my habit.

His non-arrival confirmed my suspicions. What, I wondered, could have been the purport of that mysterious message in German that he had listened to on the telephone just before we had parted?

At two o’clock I called at his house and rang the door-bell. There was no response. Both Kirk and his sister were out.

So I returned to the garage, and with Dick Drake, my stout, round-faced, dare-devil driver, who held two records at Brooklands, and was everlastingly being fined for exceeding the speed limit, I worked hard upon the refractory engine of a car which had been sent to me for repair.

All day it was misty, but towards evening the fog increased, until it became thick even in Chiswick, therefore I knew that it must be a regular “London particular” in the West End. One driver, indeed, who had come in from Romford, said he had taken four hours to cross London. Hence I resolved to possess my soul in patience and spend a quiet evening at home with my wife and her young sister, who lived with us.

Curiously enough, however, I found myself, towards six o’clock, again seized by a sudden and uncontrollable desire to return to Sussex Place in search of my mysterious neighbour. I felt within me a keen, irrepressible anxiety to fathom the curious problem which that shabby man, who declared himself immune from trial in a criminal court, had placed before me. Who could he be, that, like the King himself, he could not be brought before a judge?

At times I found myself laughing at his absurd statements, and regarding them as those of a lunatic; but at others I was bound to admit that his seriousness showed him to be in deadly earnest.

Well, to cut a long story short, at eight o’clock I took Dick Drake and managed to creep over in the fog to Regent’s Park on one of the small cars.

The door was opened, as before, by Antonio, who perceptibly started when he recognised me.

Yes, Mr Kirk was there, he admitted, and a few seconds later he came to me in the hall.

He was a changed man. His face was thinner, sallower, more haggard, and the lines about his mouth deeper and more marked; yet he greeted me affably, with many apologies for not keeping his appointment.

“I was here, very busy,” he explained. “I rang you up twice on the ’phone, but each time you were engaged.”

“Well,” I asked, going straight to the point, “what have you discovered?”

“Very little,” he said. “I’ve searched all day for finger-prints, but up to the present have found none, save those of Antonio, Ethelwynn, and members of the household.”

“You do not suspect any of the servants?” I whispered, full of suspicion of the crafty-looking Italian.

“Of course not, my dear sir. What motive could they have in killing such an excellent, easygoing master as the Professor?”

“Revenge for some fancied grievance,” I suggested.

But he only laughed my theory to scorn.

I followed him upstairs, through the red boudoir to the laboratory, to which the fog had penetrated, and there watched him making his test for recent finger-prints. His examination was both careful and methodical. He drew a pair of old grey suède gloves over his hands, and, taking up one after another of the bottles and glass apparatus, he lightly coated them with some finely powdered chalk of a grey-green colour, afterwards dusting it off.

On one or two of the bottles prints of fingers were revealed, and each of these he very carefully examined beneath the light, rejecting them one after the other.

To me, unacquainted as I was with the various lines of the finger-tips, all looked alike. But this shabby, mysterious neighbour of mine apparently read them with the utmost ease, as he would a book.

In its corner, in the same position in which we had left it on the previous night, lay the hideous body of the Professor, crouching just as he had expired. But Kershaw Kirk worked on, heedless of its presence.

I remarked to him that he was a careful and painstaking detective, whereupon he straightened his back, and, looking me in the face, said:

“Please don’t run away with the idea that I’m a detective, Mr Holford. I am not. I have no connection whatever with the police, whom, I may tell you, I hold in contempt. There’s far too much red-tape at Scotland Yard, which binds the men hand and foot and prevents them doing any real good work. Look at the serious crimes committed in London during the past three years to the perpetrators of which the police have no clue! The whole police system in London is wrong. There’s too much observation upon the speed of motor-cars and too little latitude allowed the police for inquiry into criminal cases.”

“Then you are not a police officer?” I asked, for within the last few hours I had become suspicious that such was the fact.

“No, I am not. The reason I am inquiring into the death of Professor Greer is because, for the sake of my own reputation, and in order to clear myself of any stigma upon me, I must ascertain the truth.”

“And only for that reason?” I queried.

He hesitated.

“Well – and for another – another which must remain a confidential matter with myself,” he replied at length. “The Professor was in possession of a certain secret, and my belief is that this secret was stolen from him and his mouth afterwards closed by the thief.”

“Why?”

“Because, had the unfortunate man spoken, certain complications, very serious complications, involving huge losses, would have accrued. So there was only one way – to kill poor Greer! But the manner in which this was accomplished is still an absolute enigma.”

“Has it not struck you that the telegram sent from Edinburgh may have been despatched by the assassin?” I asked.

But he was uncertain. He had as yet, he said, formed no theory as to that portion of the problem.

“Where is the unfortunate girl?” I asked, for I had noticed that she was not in the dining-room.

He looked at me quickly, with a strange expression in his peculiar eyes.

“She’s still here, of course,” he declared. “That second phase of the mystery is as complicated as the first – perhaps even more so. Come with me a moment.”

I followed him through the boudoir and into the study, where, opening a long cupboard in the wall, a small iron safe was revealed, the door of which opened at his touch.

“Here,” he explained, “the Professor kept the valuable notes upon the results of his experiments. The safe was closed when I first called, but this morning I found it open, and the contents gone!”

“Then the person who killed Professor Greer was not the thief!” I remarked.

“Unless he returned here afterwards,” was Kirk’s reply, with his eyes fixed upon mine.

Then he glanced at his watch, and without a word turned upon his heel and passed out of the room.

Chapter Six

A Further Mystery

I stood awaiting his return for a few moments, and then followed him out upon the landing, where my feet fell noiselessly upon the thick Turkey carpet. Almost opposite, across the open staircase, I could see into the large drawing-room, and there, to my amazement, I saw Kirk raising and lowering one of the blinds.

He was making the same signal to someone outside in the park as that made by the Professor before his death!

I slipped back to the study, much puzzled, but in a few moments he returned, smiling and affable.

What signal had he made – and to whom? It was foggy outside, therefore the watcher must have been in the close vicinity.

Antonio appeared at the door, whereupon Kirk gave the manservant certain instructions regarding the payment and discharge of the servants. Apparently one of them had returned and asked for her wages in lieu of notice.

“Be liberal with them,” urged my companion. “We don’t want any grumbling. There is no suspicion as yet, and liberality will disarm it.”

“Very well, signore,” replied the man, “I will pay them all and get rid of them as soon as possible.”