The Clue of the Twisted Candle · Chapter 17 (1/2)

XVII

Thomas Xavier Meredith was a shrewd young man. It was said of him by Signor Paulo Coselli, the eminent criminologist, that he had a gift of intuition which was abnormal. Probably the mystery of the twisted candle was solved by him long before any other person in the world had the dimmest idea that it was capable of solution.

The house in Cadogan Square was still in the hands of the police. To this house and particularly to Kara’s bedroom T. X. from time to time repaired, and reproduced as far as possible the conditions which obtained on the night of the murder. He had the same stifling fire, the same locked door. The latch was dropped in its socket, whilst T. X., with a stop watch in his hand, made elaborate calculations and acted certain parts which he did not reveal to a soul.

Three times, accompanied by Mansus, he went to the house, three times went to the death chamber and was alone on one occasion for an hour and a half whilst the patient Mansus waited outside. Three times he emerged looking graver on each occasion, and after the third visit he called into consultation John Lexman.

Lexman had been spending some time in the country, having deferred his trip to the United States.

“This case puzzles me more and more, John,” said T. X., troubled out of his usual boisterous self, “and thank heaven it worries other people besides me. De Mainau came over from France the other day and brought all his best sleuths, whilst O’Grady of the New York central office paid a flying visit just to get hold of the facts. Not one of them has given me the real solution, though they’ve all been rather ingenious. Gathercole has vanished and is probably on his way to some undiscoverable region, and our people have not yet traced the valet.”

“He should be the easiest for you,” said John Lexman, reflectively.

“Why Gathercole should go off I can’t understand,” T. X. continued. “According to the story which was told me by Fisher, his last words to Kara were to the effect that he was expecting a cheque or that he had received a cheque. No cheque has been presented or drawn and apparently Gathercole has gone off without waiting for any payment. An examination of Kara’s books show nothing against the Gathercole account save the sum of 600 pounds which was originally advanced, and now to upset all my calculations, look at this.”

He took from his pocketbook a newspaper cutting and pushed it across the table, for they were dining together at the Carlton. John Lexman picked up the slip and read. It was evidently from a New York paper:

“Further news has now come to hand by the Antarctic Trading Company’s steamer, Cyprus, concerning the wreck of the City of the Argentine. It is believed that this ill-fated vessel, which called at South American ports, lost her propellor and drifted south out of the track of shipping. This theory is now confirmed. Apparently the ship struck an iceberg on December 23rd and foundered with all aboard save a few men who were able to launch a boat and who were picked up by the Cyprus. The following is the passenger list.”

John Lexman ran down the list until he came upon the name which was evidently underlined in ink by T. X. That name was George Gathercole and after it in brackets (Explorer).

“If that were true, then, Gathercole could not have come to London.”

“He may have taken another boat,” said T. X., “and I cabled to the Steamship Company without any great success. Apparently Gathercole was an eccentric sort of man and lived in terror of being overcrowded. It was a habit of his to make provisional bookings by every available steamer. The company can tell me no more than that he had booked, but whether he shipped on the City of the Argentine or not, they do not know.”

“I can tell you this about Gathercole,” said John slowly and thoughtfully, “that he was a man who would not hurt a fly. He was incapable of killing any man, being constitutionally averse to taking life in any shape. For this reason he never made collections of butterflies or of bees, and I believe has never shot an animal in his life. He carried his principles to such an extent that he was a vegetarian⁠—poor old Gathercole!” he said, with the first smile which T. X. had seen on his face since he came back.

“If you want to sympathize with anybody,” said T. X. gloomily, “sympathize with me.”

On the following day T. X. was summoned to the Home Office and went steeled for a most unholy row. The Home Secretary, a large and worthy gentleman, given to the making of speeches on every excuse, received him, however, with unusual kindness.

“I’ve sent for you, Mr. Meredith,” he said, “about this unfortunate Greek. I’ve had all his private papers looked into and translated and in some cases decoded, because as you are probably aware his diaries and a great deal of his correspondence were in a code which called for the attention of experts.”

T. X. had not troubled himself greatly about Kara’s private papers but had handed them over, in accordance with instructions, to the proper authorities.

“Of course, Mr. Meredith,” the Home Secretary went on, beaming across his big table, “we expect you to continue your search for the murderer, but I must confess that your prisoner when you secure him will have a very excellent case to put to a jury.”

“That I can well believe, sir,” said T. X.

“Seldom in my long career at the bar,” began the Home Secretary in his best oratorical manner, “have I examined a record so utterly discreditable as that of the deceased man.”

Here he advanced a few instances which surprised even T. X.

“The man was a lunatic,” continued the Home Secretary, “a vicious, evil man who loved cruelty for cruelty’s sake. We have in this diary alone sufficient evidence to convict him of three separate murders, one of which was committed in this country.”

T. X. looked his astonishment.

“You will remember, Mr. Meredith, as I saw in one of your reports, that he had a chauffeur, a Greek named Poropulos.”

T. X. nodded.

“He went to Greece on the day following the shooting of Vassalaro,” he said.

The Home Secretary shook his head.

“He was killed on the same night,” said the Minister, “and you will have no difficulty in finding what remains of his body in the disused house which Kara rented for his own purpose on the Portsmouth Road. That he has killed a number of people in Albania you may well suppose. Whole villages have been wiped out to provide him with a little excitement. The man was a Nero without any of Nero’s amiable weaknesses. He was obsessed with the idea that he himself was in danger of assassination, and saw an enemy even in his trusty servant. Undoubtedly the chauffeur Poropulos was in touch with several Continental government circles. You understand,” said the Minister in conclusion, “that I am telling you this, not with the idea of expecting you, to relax your efforts to find the murderer and clear up the mystery, but in order that you may know something of the possible motive for this man’s murder.”

T. X. spent an hour going over the decoded diary and documents and left the Home Office a little shakily. It was inconceivable, incredible. Kara was a lunatic, but the directing genius was a devil.

T. X. had a flat in Whitehall Gardens and thither he repaired to change for dinner. He was half dressed when the evening paper arrived and he glanced as was his wont first at the news’ page and then at the advertisement column. He looked down the column marked “Personal” without expecting to find anything of particular interest to himself, but saw that which made him drop the paper and fly round the room in a frenzy to complete his toilet.

“Tommy X.,” ran the brief announcement, “most urgent, Marble Arch 8.”

He had five minutes to get there but it seemed like five hours. He was held up at almost every crossing and though he might have used his authority to obtain right of way, it was a step which his curious sense of honesty prevented him taking. He leapt out of the cab before it stopped, thrust the fare into the driver’s hands and looked round for the girl. He saw her at last and walked quickly towards her. As he approached her, she turned about and with an almost imperceptible beckoning gesture walked away. He followed her along the Bayswater Road and gradually drew level.

“I am afraid I have been watched,” she said in a low voice. “Will you call a cab?”

He hailed a passing taxi, helped her in and gave at random the first place that suggested itself to him, which was Finsbury Park.

“I am very worried,” she said, “and I don’t know anybody who can help me except you.”

“Is it money?” he asked.

“Money,” she said scornfully, “of course it isn’t money. I want to show you a letter,” she said after a while.

She took it from her bag and gave it to him and he struck a match and read it with difficulty.

It was written in a studiously uneducated hand.

“Dear Miss,

“I know who you are. You are wanted by the police but I will not give you away. Dear Miss. I am very hard up and 20 pounds will be very useful to me and I shall not trouble you again. Dear Miss. Put the money on the window sill of your room. I know you sleep on the ground floor and I will come in and take it. And if not⁠—well, I don’t want to make any trouble.

“When did you get this?” he asked.

“This morning,” she replied. “I sent the Agony to the paper by telegram, I knew you would come.”

“Oh, you did, did you?” he said.

Her assurance was very pleasing to him. The faith that her words implied gave him an odd little feeling of comfort and happiness.

“I can easily get you out of this,” he added; “give me your address and when the gentleman comes⁠—”

“That is impossible,” she replied hurriedly. “Please don’t think I’m ungrateful, and don’t think I’m being silly⁠—you do think I’m being silly, don’t you?”

“I have never harboured such an unworthy thought,” he said virtuously.

“Yes, you have,” she persisted, “but really I can’t tell you where I am living. I have a very special reason for not doing so. It’s not myself that I’m thinking about, but there’s a life involved.”

This was a somewhat dramatic statement to make and she felt she had gone too far.

“Perhaps I don’t mean that,” she said, “but there is someone I care for⁠—” she dropped her voice.

“Oh,” said T. X. blankly.

He came down from his rosy heights into the shadow and darkness of a sunless valley.

“Someone you care for,” he repeated after a while.

“Yes.”

There was another long silence, then,

“Oh, indeed,” said T. X.

Again the unbroken interval of quiet and after a while she said in a low voice, “Not that way.”

“Not what way?” asked T. X. huskily, his spirits doing a little mountaineering.

“The way you mean,” she said.

“Oh,” said T. X.

He was back again amidst the rosy snows of dawn, was in fact climbing a dizzy escalier on the topmost height of hope’s Mont Blanc when she pulled the ladder from under him.

“I shall, of course, never marry,” she said with a certain prim decision.

T. X. fell with a dull sickening thud, discovering that his rosy snows were not unlike cold, hard ice in their lack of resilience.

“Who said you would?” he asked somewhat feebly, but in self defence.

“You did,” she said, and her audacity took his breath away.

“Well, how am I to help you?” he asked after a while.

“By giving me some advice,” she said; “do you think I ought to put the money there?”

“Indeed I do not,” said T. X., recovering some of his natural dominance; “apart from the fact that you would be compounding a felony, you would merely be laying out trouble for yourself in the future. If he can get twenty pounds so easily, he will come for forty pounds. But why do you stay away, why don’t you return home? There’s no charge and no breath of suspicion against you.”

“Because I have something to do which I have set my mind to,” she said, with determination in her tones.

“Surely you can trust me with your address,” he urged her, “after all that has passed between us, Belinda Mary⁠—after all the years we have known one another.”

“I shall get out and leave you,” she said steadily.

“But how the dickens am I going to help you?” he protested.

“Don’t swear,” she could be very severe indeed; “the only way you can help me is by being kind and sympathetic.”

“Would you like me to burst into tears?” he asked sarcastically.

“I ask you to do nothing more painful or repugnant to your natural feelings than to be a gentleman,” she said.

“Thank you very kindly,” said T. X., and leant back in the cab with an air of supreme resignation.

“I believe you’re making faces in the dark,” she accused him.

“God forbid that I should do anything so low,” said he hastily; “what made you think that?”

“Because I was putting my tongue out at you,” she admitted, and the taxi driver heard the shrieks of laughter in the cab behind him above the wheezing of his asthmatic engine.

At twelve that night in a certain suburb of London an overcoated man moved stealthily through a garden. He felt his way carefully along the wall of the house and groped with hope, but with no great certainty, along the window sill. He found an envelope which his fingers, somewhat sensitive from long employment in nefarious uses, told him contained nothing more substantial than a letter.

He went back through the garden and rejoined his companion, who was waiting under an adjacent lamppost.

“Did she drop?” asked the other eagerly.

“I don’t know yet,” growled the man from the garden.

He opened the envelope and read the few lines.

“She hasn’t got the money,” he said, “but she’s going to get it. I must meet her tomorrow afternoon at the corner of Oxford Street and Regent Street.”

“What time?” asked the other.

“Six o’clock,” said the first man. “The chap who takes the money must carry a copy of the Westminster Gazette in his hand.”

“Oh, then it’s a plant,” said the other with conviction.

The other laughed.

“She won’t work any plants. I bet she’s scared out of her life.”

The second man bit his nails and looked up and down the road, apprehensively.

“It’s come to something,” he said bitterly; “we went out to make our thousands and we’ve come down to ‘chanting’ for twenty pounds.”

“It’s the luck,” said the other philosophically, “and I haven’t done with her by any means. Besides we’ve still got a chance of pulling of the big thing, Harry. I reckon she’s good for a hundred or two, anyway.”

At six o’clock on the following afternoon, a man dressed in a dark overcoat, with a soft felt hat pulled down over his eyes stood nonchalantly by the curb near where the buses stop at Regent Street slapping his hand gently with a folded copy of the Westminster Gazette.

That none should mistake his Liberal reading, he stood as near as possible to a street lamp and so arranged himself and his attitude that the minimum of light should fall upon his face and the maximum upon that respectable organ of public opinion. Soon after six he saw the girl approaching, out of the tail of his eye, and strolled off to meet her. To his surprise she passed him by and he was turning to follow when an unfriendly hand gripped him by the arm.

“Mr. Fisher, I believe,” said a pleasant voice.

“What do you mean?” said the man, struggling backward.

“Are you going quietly?” asked the pleasant Superintendent Mansus, “or shall I take my stick to you?”

Mr. Fisher thought awhile.

“It’s a cop,” he confessed, and allowed himself to be hustled into the waiting cab.

He made his appearance in T. X.’s office and that urbane gentleman greeted him as a friend.

“And how’s Mr. Fisher?” he asked; “I suppose you are Mr. Fisher still and not Mr. Harry Gilcott, or Mr. George Porten.”

Fisher smiled his old, deferential, deprecating smile.

“You will always have your joke, sir. I suppose the young lady gave me away.”