The Red Room

“I may be shabby, Mr Holford, for certain purposes – but needy never! I have, I’m thankful to say, quite sufficient for my wants,” he exclaimed, correcting me. “And as for my dual existence, as you term it, have I ever endeavoured to conceal it from you?”

“Tell me – once and for all – are you aware of my wife’s whereabouts?” I demanded in frantic anxiety. “Can’t you see that this suspense is turning my brain?”

“Yes, it is very unfortunate – and still more unfortunate that I can afford you no satisfaction. The fact of Mrs Holford’s prolonged absence is as great a mystery to me as to yourself.”

“Scotland Yard will render me no help,” I said in bitter chagrin.

“Probably not – after the amazing story you told them,” was his rather spiteful response.

“What am I to do?”

“Remain patient and watchful,” he said. “Believe in me, and try and persuade yourself that, after all, I’m not an assassin,” he smiled.

I held my breath for a few seconds. Here was the crux of the whole matter. He was still cleverly and ingeniously endeavouring to lead me into a false sense of security – to make me believe that he was innocent of all knowledge of that most astounding tragedy in Sussex Place.

Ah! his was indeed a clever ruse. But my eyes were now opened, so I only smiled within myself at the futility of his crafty and clever attempt further to mislead and cheat me.

A man was with my wife, passing himself off as myself – Henry Holford, motor engineer. And yet I could look to no one for counsel, advice, or aid!

Now that the police had refused to inquire into the death of poor Greer, the attitude of my weird, grey-faced neighbour had become more defiant. He was full of bitter reproaches, yet at the same time entirely heedless of my future actions.

Once or twice while speaking to me he turned, as was his habit, to Joseph the parrot, addressing asides to his pet, causing the bird to screech noisily, grow excited, and make idiotic responses.

“Mark me, Mr Holford,” he said at length, “you did a most foolish thing to betray me to Scotland Yard. In you I’m most disappointed, I assure you. My confidence was misplaced.”

“I understand you’ve been to my garage and in my absence purchased an Eckhardt tyre,” I remarked.

“Well?” he said, opening his eyes slightly. “I only came down to see you, but when I found you absent I bought a tyre as an excuse.”

“And you expect me to believe that, eh?” I asked, with a dry laugh.

“You can believe it or not believe it, just as you think fit,” was his quick reply. “I have no use for motor-tyres, not possessing a car.”

I grinned in disbelief, recollecting the air of secrecy with which he had examined the tyre on the first occasion he had called upon me, and also the effect produced upon him later when I told him of the two other men who had called to inspect the tyre.

I think I remained with him for nearly an hour. Then, after he had told me that his intention was to stay in England, at least for the present, I left him and walked back to my desolate home, where, Gwen having retired, I sat for a further hour in my den, deeply thinking.

That Kirk was in some secret way in association with the bogus Professor was plain. Was it not, then, more than likely that they would ere long meet again? If I kept a wary eye upon him, I might, I saw, discover something of great interest.

Who could this man be who led a dual existence for no apparent cause; this man who was narrow-minded and penurious in Bedford Park, yet was wealthy and open-handed in Whitehall Court?

As I calmly reviewed the whole extraordinary situation I saw that, in turn, I mistrusted the whole of the actors in that bewildering drama. Ethelwynn, the calm, sweet, clear-eyed girl, so content in her great love for Leonard Langton, though she had actually witnessed her father lying dead and cold, yet now refused to presume his death! Why? Doctor Flynn I disliked instinctively; Langton was evidently playing a double game, having denied all knowledge of Kirk, whereas the latter was his friend; Antonio and Pietro were away; while Kirk himself, silent and cunning, was pretending a complete ignorance which was only ill-feigned.

And the most important point of all was that not a breath of suspicion of the Professor’s death had yet leaked out to the public.

Thus, utterly bewildered, I again retired to rest.

Early astir next morning, I set watch upon Kirk’s movements, assisted by Dick Drake, my clean-shaven, bullet-headed chauffeur. A few moments before eleven he came forth, thinly clad and shabby, as he generally appeared in Chiswick, and, walking to Ravenscourt Park Station, took a third-class ticket to Westminster, whence he walked to a rather grimy house situate in Page Street, a poor neighbourhood lying behind the Abbey. There he remained for some time, after which, fearing lest he should recognise me, I directed Drake to follow him, and returned to the garage.

At six that evening my man returned, tired and hungry, reporting that Kirk had gone to a house in Foley Street, Tottenham Court Road, the number of which he gave me, and after ten minutes there he had eaten his luncheon at a bar in Oxford Street. Then he had taken train from Holborn Viaduct to Shortlands, near Bromley, where he had made a call at a small villa residence not far from the station.

The door of the house had been opened by a tall, thin man in a dark blue jersey, who, he said, had the appearance of a foreigner, and Kirk had stayed inside for nearly two hours. When at last he came out, the tall man had walked with him to the station, and bade him adieu on the platform.

“But,” added Drake, “that gentleman’s a pretty ’cute one, sir. He spotted me.”

“H’m, that’s unfortunate,” I said. “You were a bit too bold, I fear.”

Of course I had told him nothing of the reason why I was watching the man who had evinced such interest in the Eckhardt tyre.

“I exercised all the caution possible,” Drake declared, “but he doubled back upon me down at Shortlands and thus tricked me. He didn’t say anything, but only laughed in my face.”

The story of the foreigner at the villa at Shortlands struck me as somewhat remarkable, and I resolved to go there on the morrow and investigate. I now held all Kershaw Kirk’s movements in suspicion.

Next day I rose with the fixed intention of going at once down to Shortlands, that district of suburban villadom, but hardly had I risen from the table where I had breakfasted in silence with Gwen, when something occurred to turn the tide of events into an entirely different channel.

Indeed, by that sudden and unexpected occurrence I knew that I had at last advanced one step towards the knowledge of who killed Professor Greer behind those locked doors in Sussex Place.

Chapter Twenty Five

A Plot Fails

What actually occurred was this. I had risen from the table when Annie entered with a telegram which, on opening, I found to be an urgent message from Langton, at Broadstairs, begging me to go there at once, as he had some important information to communicate to me.

From the time-table I found that a fast train left Victoria in an hour, and full of excitement I bade good-bye to Gwen, promising to wire her the result of the interview.

Soon after noon I strode down the steep street of the quiet little watering-place so beloved by Dickens. On that February day it was very chilly, and very deserted, but gaining the parade I crossed the footbridge, and, continuing past the Grand Hotel, went along the top of the cliffs beyond the town, to where stood the late Professor’s seaside red-brick home.

In the small but pretty drawing-room I was greeted by Ethelwynn and her lover, who were standing talking near the fire as I entered. The girl looked delightfully sweet in a pale blue blouse and dark brown skirt, her splendid hair dressed in a style that suited her admirably, while he, on his part, presented the appearance of the typical clean-limbed, well-bred Englishman. They were, indeed, a handsome pair.

“It’s very good of you, Mr Holford, to come down so quickly!” the girl exclaimed, as she took my hand. “Leonard wants to have a serious chat with you.”

And yet this was the girl who was privy to her father’s tragic end. Was it possible that her lover also knew the truth?

Langton invited me to a chair, and commenced by haltingly apologising for bringing me down from London.

“We, however, considered it necessary,” he went on; “necessary in the interests of us all that there should exist a clear and perfect understanding between us.”

“In what manner?” I asked Langton.

“Well,” he said, “it has come to our knowledge that you have been relating a most extraordinary story regarding Ethelwynn’s father. You declare that he died under suspicious circumstances.”

“Whatever I’ve said is the truth – the plain and absolute truth,” I declared openly. “Mr Kirk introduced me into the house in Sussex Place, where I saw the poor Professor lying dead in his laboratory.”

“Ah!” cried the girl quickly, her manner suddenly changing. “Then you are a friend of Kirk’s – not of my father?”

“That is so,” I admitted. “And in Kirk’s company I saw your father lying dead through violence.”

“And you’ve dared to put forward this story as an absolute fact!” Langton cried. “Do you happen to know who Kershaw Kirk really is?”

“No; I’d very much like to know,” I said, full of anxiety. “Who is he?”

“If you knew, you would, I think, have hesitated before you went to the police with such a fairy tale as yours.”

“It is no fairy tale, Mr Langton!” I declared very earnestly. “I have with my own eyes seen the Professor lying dead.”

“But you forget that my father went to Edinburgh on that night, and wired me from there next day,” the girl pointed out, fixing her splendid eyes on mine with unwavering gaze.

“I forget no point of the remarkable affair, Miss Greer,” I said quietly. “As a matter of fact, I followed the man believed to be your father to Scotland.”

“You – you followed him?” gasped Langton, while the girl’s cheeks grew paler. “Did you see him? Did you speak with him?”

“No; but I discovered some rather interesting facts which, when the time arrives, I intend to put forward as proof of a very remarkable subterfuge.”

The pair exchanged meaning glances in silence. The girl was seated in an arm-chair opposite to me, near the fire, while Langton stood upon the hearthrug, with his hands thrust with feigned carelessness into his pockets.

“The whole affair was no doubt most cleverly-planned, thanks to the ingenuity of Kirk. The servants were all in ignorance of anything unusual – all save Antonio, who, as you know, has escaped to the Continent.”

“Escaped!” The pretty girl laughed uneasily. “The last I heard of him was that he was with my father, travelling in Hungary.”

“When?”

“Four days ago.”

“How can I find them? What is the Professor’s address?” I asked.

“He has no fixed abode. My last letter I sent to the Poste Restante in Buda-Pesth.”

In this I saw an intention still to preserve the secret of the impostor’s whereabouts.

“But it was not my intention in asking you down, Mr Holford, to go into details of what may, or may not, have happened. We – that is, Ethelwynn and myself – know the truth.”

“Then tell it to me – relieve this burden of a crime which is oppressing me?” I begged. “Let me know the truth, and let me at least regain my lost wife.”

“Well? And if we did?” asked Ethelwynn, after a pause. “We should only lay ourselves open to an unjust retaliation.”

Were not those the words of a woman who possessed some guilty knowledge, if not herself guilty of parricide? I saw their frantic desire to close my mouth, so I let them proceed, smiling within myself at their too apparent efforts to avoid the revelations which must inevitably result.

“I do not follow your meaning,” I said. “Why should I retaliate, if you are not responsible for my wife’s absence?”

She glanced uneasily across to her lover, who exclaimed:

“As far as I see, the whole thing lies in a nutshell, Mr Holford. You have been misinformed, and have made a ridiculous and quite unfounded statement concerning Professor Greer – one which seriously reflects upon his daughter, his household, and his friends. Therefore – ”

“Then does his daughter actually deny having seen him, as I saw him, lying dead in the laboratory?” I interrupted.

“I have never seen my father lying dead!” declared the girl in a low, faltering tone which in itself showed her to be uttering an untruth. “Your story is entirely unfounded.”

“Then let me tell you one thing more, Miss Greer,” I said plainly. “I myself knelt at your side with Kirk when we found you in the dining-room lying, as we thought, lifeless. There was a white mark upon your face. See! It has hardly disappeared yet; there are still traces – a slight red discoloration!”

The girl held her breath at this allegation. That mark upon her cheek condemned her. Even her lover, for a moment, could not reply.

“Ah,” he said at last, “the loss of Mrs Holford has upset you, and causes you to make all sorts of wild and ridiculous statements, it seems. Kirk says they would not listen to you at Scotland Yard – and no wonder!”

“Then you know Kirk, eh – you who denied all knowledge of him when we first met!” I cried. “It was he who placed the poor Professor’s remains in the furnace in the laboratory, for from the ashes I recovered various scraps of his clothing which are now in my possession.”

“Rubbish, my dear sir!” laughed the young man. “You don’t know Kirk – or who he is!”

“I know him to be an adventurer who has two places of residence,” I said.

“But an adventurer is not necessarily a scoundrel,” Langton replied. “Many a good-hearted wanderer becomes a cosmopolitan and an adventurer, but he still retains all the traits and all the honour of a gentleman.”

“Not in Kirk’s case!” I cried.

“You’ve evidently quarrelled with him,” remarked Langton.

“I’ve quarrelled with him in so far as I mean to expose the secret assassination of Professor Greer and those who, for their own purposes, are making pretence that the dead man is still alive,” I answered boldly.

“By the latter, I take it, you mean ourselves?” observed the dead man’s daughter.

“I include all who lie, well knowing that the Professor is dead and all traces of his body have been destroyed,” was my meaning response.

“What’s this story of yours about Miss Greer presenting an appearance of death?” asked Langton. “Tell me – it is the first time I’ve heard this.” In a few brief sentences I told them of our discovery in the dining-room, and of the removal of the girl in a cab on that foggy night.

At my words both looked genuinely puzzled.

“What do you say to that?” asked her lover.

“I know nothing – nothing whatever of it!” she declared. “I can only think that Mr Holford must be dreaming.”

“Surely not when, with my own hands, I held a mirror to your lips to obtain traces of your breath!” I exclaimed. “Ask Antonio. He will tell you how he and his brother Pietro placed you in a cab at Kirk’s orders.”

“At Kirk’s orders?” echoed the young man. “Ask him for yourself,” I said.

They were both full of surprise and anxiety at what I had alleged.

Was it possible that I had been mistaken in Ethelwynn’s attitude, and that she genuinely believed that her father still lived? But that could not be, for had she not seen him dead with her own eyes? No. The girl, aided by her lover, was carrying out a cunningly-devised scheme effectively to seal my lips.

My wife Mabel had, before her disappearance, been in communication with the impostor whom Ethelwynn had apparently taken under her protection. This was a point that was most puzzling. Could this girl and my wife have been secretly acquainted? If so, then it was more than probable that she might have knowledge of Mabel’s whereabouts.

Again I referred to the loss of my wife, declaring that if I found her I would willingly forgo all further investigation into the Professor’s death.

The handsome girl exchanged glances with her lover, glances which showed me plainly that they were acting in accordance with some premeditated plan. Leonard Langton was a sharp, shrewd, far-seeing man, or he would never have held the appointment of private secretary to Sir Albert Oppenheim.

“Well, Mr Holford,” he said, “why don’t you speak candidly and openly? You are, I take it, eager to make terms with your enemies, eh?”

“But who are my enemies?” I cried blankly. “As far as I’m aware, I’ve made none!”

“A man arouses enmity often without intention,” was his reply. “I cannot, of course, tell who are these enemies of yours, but it is evident from your statement the other day at Wimpole Street that they are responsible for your wife’s disappearance.”

“Well,” I said, “you are right. I am open to make terms if Mabel is given back at once to me.”

“And what are they?” asked Ethelwynn, whose very eagerness condemned her.

“Pardon me, Miss Greer,” I said rather hastily, “but I cannot discern in what manner my matrimonial affairs can interest you.”

“Oh – er – well,” she laughed nervously, “of course they don’t really – only your wife’s disappearance has struck me as very remarkable.”

“No, Miss Greer,” I said, “not really so remarkable as it at first appears. My own inquisitiveness was the cause of her being enticed away, so that I might be drawn off the investigation I had undertaken – the inquiry into who killed Professor Greer.”

Her cheeks went paler, and she bit her lip. Her whole attitude was that of a woman aware of a bitter and tragic truth, yet, for her own honour, she dared not divulge it. She undoubtedly held the secret – the secret of her father’s death. Yet, for some purpose that was yet a complete enigma, she was protecting the impostor who had stepped into the dead man’s shoes.

The pair had brought me down there in order to entrap me – most probably a plot of Kirk’s. Their intention was to mislead and deceive me, and at the same time to secure my silence. But in my frantic anxiety and constant dread I was not easily entrapped. I had seen through the transparency of Kirk’s attitude, and I had likewise proved to my own satisfaction that, however much of the truth Leonard Langton knew, the girl of the innocent eyes was feigning an ignorance that was culpable, for within her heart she knew the truth of her father’s tragic end, even though she calmly asserted that he still lived and was in the best of health.

I had believed on entering that room, the windows of which looked out upon that grey-green wintry sea, that I should learn something concerning my dear wife, that I should perhaps obtain a clue to her whereabouts.

But as I fixed my eyes upon those of Ethelwynn Greer, I saw in them a guilty knowledge, and by it knew that in that direction hope was futile.

True, she had sounded me as to what undertaking I was ready to give, but the whole situation was so horrible and so bewildering that I could not bring myself to make any compact that would prevent Greer’s assassin being exposed.

So, instead, I sat full of chagrin, telling the pair much which held them in fear and apprehension.

It was evident that I knew more than they had believed I did, and that Langton was filled with regret that he had invited me there.

What, I wondered, could possibly be Ethelwynn’s motive in concealing her father’s death? I recollected how the assassin must have brushed past her in the Red Room to enter the laboratory on that fatal night, and that he must have again passed her on leaving.

Did she awake and recognise him, or had she herself been an accomplice in securing her father’s sudden and tragic end? Who could tell? In that startling suggestion I found much food for deep reflection.

Chapter Twenty Six

I Scent the Impostor

A whole fortnight went past. Mabel’s silence was inexplicable.

The house in Sussex Place was still in the hands of the caretaker, and, though I watched both Doctor Flynn and Leonard Langton in secret, the results of my vigilance were nil.

I was in despair. Refused assistance by Scotland Yard, and treated as an enemy by Kershaw Kirk, I could only sit with Gwen at home and form a thousand wild conjectures.

Advertisements for news of Mabel had brought no word of response. Indeed, it seemed much as though the theory of those two detectives was the correct one, namely, that she had left me of her own will, and did not intend to return. Gwen, indeed, suggested this one day, but I made pretence of scouting it. Mabel’s mother, who now lived up in Aberdeenshire, had written two letters, and I had been compelled to reply, to tell a lie and say that she was away at Cheltenham.

My business I neglected sadly, for nowadays I seldom went to the garage. Kirk was, I understood, living in Whitehall Court, but I did not call upon him. What was the use? I had tried every means of learning where Mabel was, but, alas! there seemed a conspiracy of silence against me. I had left no effort unexerted. Yet all had been in vain.

Antonio had, according to Ethelwynn, joined “the Professor” in Hungary. Was not that, in itself, sufficient evidence of collusion? As for Pietro, inquiry I made in the Euston Road showed that he had not yet returned to England.

Many times I felt impelled to go out to Buda-Pesth and endeavour to trace the pair. But I hesitated, because, finding Ethelwynn’s statements unreliable in some particulars, I feared to accept what she said as the truth. Would it not be to her interest to mislead me and send me off upon a wild-goose chase?

No man in the whole of our great feverish London was so full of constant anxiety, frantic fear, and breathless bewilderment as myself. Ah, how I existed through those grey, gloomy March days I cannot explain. The mystery of it all was inscrutable.

I should, I knew, be able to satisfy myself as to poor Mabel’s fate if only I could clear up the mystery of who killed Professor Greer.

This tension of nerves and constant longing for the return of the one for whom I held such a great and all-absorbing love was now telling upon my health. I ate little, and the mirror revealed how pale, careworn, and haggard I had become. Since the dawn of the New Year I was, alas! a changed man. In two months I had aged fully ten years.

From inquiries I made of men interested in science and in chemistry I had discovered how great a man was the dead Professor, and how beneficial to mankind had been certain of his discoveries. Fate – or is it some world spirit of tragic-comedy? – plays strange pranks with human lives now and then, and surely nothing more singular ever happened in our London life of to-day than what I have already narrated in these pages.

And to that thin, grey-faced neighbour of mine – the man who led a double life – was due the blame for it all. Though I made every endeavour and every inquiry, I could not learn what was his profession. That he was a man of means, a constant traveller, and well known in clubland, was all the information I could obtain.

You will wonder, perhaps, why I did not go again to Whitehall Court and force the truth from the fellow’s lips. Well, I hesitated, because in every argument I had had with him he had always won and always turned the tables upon myself. I had made a promise which, however justifiable my action, I had, nevertheless, broken. I had denounced him to the police, believing that I should see him arrested and charged. Yet, on the contrary, the authorities refused to lift a finger against him.

What could I think? What, indeed, would you have thought in the circumstances? How would you have acted?

One morning I had gone out early with Drake, trying the chassis of a new “twenty-four,” and finding ourselves in front of the grey old cathedral at Chichester, we pulled up at the ancient “Dolphin” to have luncheon. My mind had been full of Mabel all the way, and though I had driven I had paid little or no attention to the car’s defects. Dick Drake, motor enthusiast as he was, probably regarded my preoccupied manner as curious, but he made no comment, though he had no doubt noted all the defects himself.

I had lunched in the big upstairs room – a noble apartment, as well known to travellers in the old coaching days as to the modern motorist – and had passed along into another room, where I lit a cigarette and stretched myself lazily before the fire.