The Clue of the Twisted Candle

“A trunk call,” he said over his shoulder to the departing commissioner, “it may be something interesting.”

A little pause; then a hoarse voice spoke to him. “Is that you, T. X.?”

“That’s me,” said the Assistant Commissioner, commonly.

“It’s John Lexman speaking.”

“I shouldn’t have recognized your voice,” said T. X., “what is wrong with you, John, can’t you get your plot to went?”

“I want you to come down here at once,” said the voice urgently, and even over the telephone T. X. recognized the distress. “I have shot a man, killed him!”

T. X. gasped.

“Good Lord,” he said, “you are a silly ass!”

CHAPTER III

In the early hours of the morning a tragic little party was assembled in the study at Beston Priory. John Lexman, white and haggard, sat on the sofa with his wife by his side. Immediate authority as represented by a village constable was on duty in the passage outside, whilst T. X. sitting at the table with a writing pad and a pencil was briefly noting the evidence.

The author had sketched the events of the day. He had described his interview with the money-lender the day before and the arrival of the letter.

“You have the letter!” asked T. X.

John Lexman nodded.

“I am glad of that,” said the other with a sigh of relief, “that will save you from a great deal of unpleasantness, my poor old chap. Tell me what happened afterward.”

“I reached the village,” said John Lexman, “and passed through it. There was nobody about, the rain was still falling very heavily and indeed I didn’t meet a single soul all the evening. I reached the place appointed about five minutes before time. It was the corner of Eastbourne Road on the station side and there I found Vassalaro waiting. I was rather ashamed of myself at meeting him at all under these conditions, but I was very keen on his not coming to the house for I was afraid it would upset Grace. What made it all the more ridiculous was this infernal pistol which was in my pocket banging against my side with every step I took as though to nudge me to an understanding of my folly.”

“Where did you meet Vassalaro?” asked T. X.

“He was on the other side of the Eastbourne Road and crossed the road to meet me. At first he was very pleasant though a little agitated but afterward he began to behave in a most extraordinary manner as though he was lashing himself up into a fury which he didn’t feel. I promised him a substantial amount on account, but he grew worse and worse and then, suddenly, before I realised what he was doing, he was brandishing a revolver in my face and uttering the most extraordinary threats. Then it was I remembered Kara’s warning.”

“Kara,” said T. X. quickly.

“A man I know and who was responsible for introducing me to Vassalaro. He is immensely wealthy.”

“I see,” said T. X., “go on.”

“I remembered this warning,” the other proceeded, “and I thought it worth while trying it out to see if it had any effect upon the little man. I pulled the pistol from my pocket and pointed it at him, but that only seemed to make it—and then I pressed the trigger....

“To my horror four shots exploded before I could recover sufficient self-possession to loosen my hold of the butt. He fell without a word. I dropped the revolver and knelt by his side. I could tell he was dangerously wounded, and indeed I knew at that moment that nothing would save him. My pistol had been pointed in the region of his heart....”

He shuddered, dropping his face in his hands, and the girl by his side, encircling his shoulder with a protecting arm, murmured something in his ear. Presently he recovered.

“He wasn’t quite dead. I heard him murmur something but I wasn’t able to distinguish what he said. I went straight to the village and told the constable and had the body removed.”

T. X. rose from the table and walked to the door and opened it.

“Come in, constable,” he said, and when the man made his appearance, “I suppose you were very careful in removing this body, and you took everything which was lying about in the immediate vicinity’?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the man, “I took his hat and his walkingstick, if that’s what you mean.”

“And the revolver!” asked T. X.

The man shook his head.

“There warn’t any revolver, sir, except the pistol which Mr. Lexman had.”

He fumbled in his pocket and pulled it out gingerly, and T. X. took it from him.

“I’ll look after your prisoner; you go down to the village, get any help you can and make a most careful search in the place where this man was killed and bring me the revolver which you will discover. You’ll probably find it in a ditch by the side of the road. I’ll give a sovereign to the man who finds it.”

The constable touched his hat and went out.

“It looks rather a weird case to me,” said T. X., as he came back to the table, “can’t you see the unusual features yourself, Lexman! It isn’t unusual for you to owe money and it isn’t unusual for the usurer to demand the return of that money, but in this case he is asking for it before it was due, and further than that he was demanding it with threats. It is not the practice of the average money lender to go after his clients with a loaded revolver. Another peculiar thing is that if he wished to blackmail you, that is to say, bring you into contempt in the eyes of your friends, why did he choose to meet you in a dark and unfrequented road, and not in your house where the moral pressure would be greatest? Also, why did he write you a threatening letter which would certainly bring him into the grip of the law and would have saved you a great deal of unpleasantness if he had decided upon taking action!”

He tapped his white teeth with the end of his pencil and then suddenly,

“I think I’ll see that letter,” he said.

John Lexman rose from the sofa, crossed to the safe, unlocked it and was unlocking the steel drawer in which he had placed the incriminating document. His hand was on the key when T. X. noticed the look of surprise on his face.

“What is it!” asked the detective suddenly.

“This drawer feels very hot,” said John,—he looked round as though to measure the distance between the safe and the fire.

T. X. laid his hand upon the front of the drawer. It was indeed warm.

“Open it,” said T. X., and Lexman turned the key and pulled the drawer open.

As he did so, the whole contents burst up in a quick blaze of flame. It died down immediately and left only a little coil of smoke that flowed from the safe into the room.

“Don’t touch anything inside,” said T. X. quickly.

He lifted the drawer carefully and placed it under the light. In the bottom was no more than a few crumpled white ashes and a blister of paint where the flame had caught the side.

“I see,” said T. X. slowly.

He saw something more than that handful of ashes, he saw the deadly peril in which his friend was standing. Here was one half of the evidence in Lexman’s favour gone, irredeemably.

“The letter was written on a paper which was specially prepared by a chemical process which disintegrated the moment the paper was exposed to the air. Probably if you delayed putting the letter in the drawer another five minutes, you would have seen it burn before your eyes. As it was, it was smouldering before you had turned the key of the box. The envelope!”

“Kara burnt it,” said Lexman in a low voice, “I remember seeing him take it up from the table and throw it in the fire.”

T. X. nodded.

“There remains the other half of the evidence,” he said grimly, and when an hour later, the village constable returned to report that in spite of his most careful search he had failed to discover the dead man’s revolver, his anticipations were realized.