The Clue of the Twisted Candle

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

“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 to-morrow 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 20 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.”

“You gave yourself away, my poor Fisher,” said T. X., and put a strip of paper before him; “you may disguise your hand, and in your extreme modesty pretend to an ignorance of the British language, which is not creditable to your many attainments, but what you must be awfully careful in doing in future when you write such epistles,” he said, “is to wash your hands.”

“Wash my hands!” repeated the puzzled Fisher.

T. X. nodded.

“You see you left a little thumb print, and we are rather whales on thumb prints at Scotland Yard, Fisher.”

“I see. What is the charge now, sir!”

“I shall make no charge against you except the conventional one of being a convict under license and failing to report.”

Fisher heaved a sigh.

“That’ll only mean twelve months. Are you going to charge me with this business?” he nodded to the paper.

T. X. shook his head.

“I bear you no ill-will although you tried to frighten Miss Bartholomew. Oh yes, I know it is Miss Bartholomew, and have known all the time. The lady is there for a reason which is no business of yours or of mine. I shall not charge you with attempt to blackmail and in reward for my leniency I hope you are going to tell me all you know about the Kara murder. You wouldn’t like me to charge you with that, would you by any chance!”

Fisher drew a long breath.

“No, sir, but if you did I could prove my innocence,” he said earnestly. “I spent the whole of the evening in the kitchen.”

“Except a quarter of an hour,” said T. X.

The man nodded.

“That’s true, sir, I went out to see a pal of mine.”

“The man who is in this!” asked T. X.

Fisher hesitated.

“Yes, sir. He was with me in this but there was nothing wrong about the business—as far as we went. I don’t mind admitting that I was planning a Big Thing. I’m not going to blow on it, if it’s going to get me into trouble, but if you’ll promise me that it won’t, I’ll tell you the whole story.”

“Against whom was this coup of yours planned?”

“Against Mr. Kara, sir,” said Fisher.

“Go on with your story,” nodded T. X.

The story was a short and commonplace one. Fisher had met a man who knew another man who was either a Turk or an Albanian. They had learnt that Kara was in the habit of keeping large sums of money in the house and they had planned to rob him. That was the story in a nutshell. Somewhere the plan miscarried. It was when he came to the incidents that occurred on the night of the murder that T. X. followed him with the greatest interest.

“The old gentleman came in,” said Fisher, “and I saw him up to the room. I heard him coming out and I went up and spoke to him while he was having a chat with Mr. Kara at the open door.”

“Did you hear Mr. Kara speak?”

“I fancy I did, sir,” said Fisher; “anyway the old gentleman was quite pleased with himself.”

“Why do you say ‘old gentleman’!” asked T. X.; “he was not an old man.”

“Not exactly, sir,” said Fisher, “but he had a sort of fussy irritable way that old gentlemen sometimes have and I somehow got it fixed in my mind that he was old. As a matter of fact, he was about forty-five, he may have been fifty.”

“You have told me all this before. Was there anything peculiar about him!”

Fisher hesitated.

“Nothing, sir, except the fact that one of his arms was a game one.”

“Meaning that it was—”

“Meaning that it was an artificial one, sir, so far as I can make out.”

“Was it his right or his left arm that was game!” interrupted T. X.

“His left arm, sir.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’d swear to it, sir.”

“Very well, go on.”

“He came downstairs and went out and I never saw him again. When you came and the murder was discovered and knowing as I did that I had my own scheme on and that one of your splits might pinch me, I got a bit rattled. I went downstairs to the hall and the first thing I saw lying on the table was a letter. It was addressed to me.”

He paused and T. X. nodded.

“Go on,” he said again.

“I couldn’t understand how it came to be there, but as I’d been in the kitchen most of the evening except when I was seeing my pal outside to tell him the job was off for that night, it might have been there before you came. I opened the letter. There were only a few words on it and I can tell you those few words made my heart jump up into my mouth, and made me go cold all over.”

“What were they!” asked T. X.

“I shall not forget them, sir. They’re sort of permanently fixed in my brain,” said the man earnestly; “the note started with just the figures ‘A. C. 274.’”

“What was that!” asked T. X.

“My convict number when I was in Dartmoor Prison, sir.”

“What did the note say?”

“‘Get out of here quick’—I don’t know who had put it there, but I’d evidently been spotted and I was taking no chances. That’s the whole story from beginning to end. I accidentally happened to meet the young lady, Miss Holland—Miss Bartholomew as she is—and followed her to her house in Portman Place. That was the night you were there.”

T. X. found himself to his intense annoyance going very red.

“And you know no more?” he asked.

“No more, sir—and if I may be struck dead—”

“Keep all that sabbath talk for the chaplain,” commended T. X., and they took away Mr. Fisher, not an especially dissatisfied man.

That night T. X. interviewed his prisoner at Cannon Row police station and made a few more enquiries.

“There is one thing I would like to ask you,” said the girl when he met her next morning in Green Park.

“If you were going to ask whether I made enquiries as to where your habitation was,” he warned her, “I beg of you to refrain.”

She was looking very beautiful that morning, he thought. The keen air had brought a colour to her face and lent a spring to her gait, and, as she strode along by his side with the free and careless swing of youth, she was an epitome of the life which even now was budding on every tree in the park.

“Your father is back in town, by the way,” he said, “and he is most anxious to see you.”

She made a little grimace.

“I hope you haven’t been round talking to father about me.”

“Of course I have,” he said helplessly; “I have also had all the reporters up from Fleet Street and given them a full description of your escapades.”

She looked round at him with laughter in her eyes.

“You have all the manners of an early Christian martyr,” she said. “Poor soul! Would you like to be thrown to the lions?”

“I should prefer being thrown to the demnition ducks and drakes,” he said moodily.

“You’re such a miserable man,” she chided him, “and yet you have everything to make life worth living.”

“Ha, ha!” said T. X.

“You have, of course you have! You have a splendid position. Everybody looks up to you and talks about you. You have got a wife and family who adore you—”

He stopped and looked at her as though she were some strange insect.

“I have a how much?” he asked credulously.

“Aren’t you married?” she asked innocently.

He made a strange noise in his throat.

“Do you know I have always thought of you as married,” she went on; “I often picture you in your domestic circle reading to the children from the Daily Megaphone those awfully interesting stories about Little Willie Waterbug.”

He held on to the railings for support.

“May we sit down?” he asked faintly.

She sat by his side, half turned to him, demure and wholly adorable.

“Of course you are right in one respect,” he said at last, “but you’re altogether wrong about the children.”

“Are you married!” she demanded with no evidence of amusement.

“Didn’t you know?” he asked.

She swallowed something.

“Of course it’s no business of mine and I’m sure I hope you are very happy.”

“Perfectly happy,” said T. X. complacently. “You must come out and see me one Saturday afternoon when I am digging the potatoes. I am a perfect devil when they let me loose in the vegetable garden.”

“Shall we go on?” she said.

He could have sworn there were tears in her eyes and manlike he thought she was vexed with him at his fooling.

“I haven’t made you cross, have I?” he asked.

“Oh no,” she replied.

“I mean you don’t believe all this rot about my being married and that sort of thing?”

“I’m not interested,” she said, with a shrug of her shoulders, “not very much. You’ve been very kind to me and I should be an awful boor if I wasn’t grateful. Of course, I don’t care whether you’re married or not, it’s nothing to do with me, is it?”

“Naturally it isn’t,” he replied. “I suppose you aren’t married by any chance?”

“Married,” she repeated bitterly; “why, you will make my fourth!”

She had hardy got the words out of her mouth before she realized her terrible error. A second later she was in his arms and he was kissing her to the scandal of one aged park keeper, one small and dirty-faced little boy and a moulting duck who seemed to sneer at the proceedings which he watched through a yellow and malignant eye.

“Belinda Mary,” said T. X. at parting, “you have got to give up your little country establishment, wherever it may be and come back to the discomforts of Portman Place. Oh, I know you can’t come back yet. That ‘somebody’ is there, and I can pretty well guess who it is.”

“Who?” she challenged.

“I rather fancy your mother has come back,” he suggested.

A look of scorn dawned into her pretty face.

“Good lord, Tommy!” she said in disgust, “you don’t think I should keep mother in the suburbs without her telling the world all about it!”

“You’re an undutiful little beggar,” he said.

They had reached the Horse Guards at Whitehall and he was saying good-bye to her.

“If it comes to a matter of duty,” she answered, “perhaps you will do your duty and hold up the traffic for me and let me cross this road.”

“My dear girl,” he protested, “hold up the traffic?”

“Of course,” she said indignantly, “you’re a policeman.”

“Only when I am in uniform,” he said hastily, and piloted her across the road.

It was a new man who returned to the gloomy office in Whitehall. A man with a heart that swelled and throbbed with the pride and joy of life’s most precious possession.

CHAPTER XVIII

T. X. sat at his desk, his chin in his hands, his mind remarkably busy. Grave as the matter was which he was considering, he rose with alacrity to meet the smiling girl who was ushered through the door by Mansus, preternaturally solemn and mysterious.

She was radiant that day. Her eyes were sparkling with an unusual brightness.

“I’ve got the most wonderful thing to tell you,” she said, “and I can’t tell you.”

“That’s a very good beginning,” said T. X., taking her muff from her hand.

“Oh, but it’s really wonderful,” she cried eagerly, “more wonderful than anything you have ever heard about.”

“We are interested,” said T. X. blandly.

“No, no, you mustn’t make fun,” she begged, “I can’t tell you now, but it is something that will make you simply—” she was at a loss for a simile.

“Jump out of my skin?” suggested T. X.

“I shall astonish you,” she nodded her head solemnly.

“I take a lot of astonishing, I warn you,” he smiled; “to know you is to exhaust one’s capacity for surprise.”

“That can be either very, very nice or very, very nasty,” she said cautiously.

“But accept it as being very, very nice,” he laughed. “Now come, out with this tale of yours.”

She shook her head very vigorously.

“I can’t possibly tell you anything,” she said.

“Then why the dickens do you begin telling anything for?” he complained, not without reason.

“Because I just want you to know that I do know something.”

“Oh, Lord!” he groaned. “Of course you know everything. Belinda Mary, you’re really the most wonderful child.”

He sat on the edge of her arm-chair and laid his hand on her shoulder.

“And you’ve come to take me out to lunch!”

“What were you worrying about when I came in?” she asked.

He made a little gesture as if to dismiss the subject.

“Nothing very much. You’ve heard me speak of John Lexman?”

She bent her head.

“Lexman’s the writer of a great many mystery stories, but you’ve probably read his books.”

She nodded again, and again T. X. noticed the suppressed eagerness in her eyes.

“You’re not ill or sickening for anything, are you?” he asked anxiously; “measles, or mumps or something?”

“Don’t be silly,” she said; “go on and tell me something about Mr. Lexman.”

“He’s going to America,” said T. X., “and before he goes he wants to give a little lecture.”

“A lecture?”

“It sounds rum, doesn’t it, but that’s just what he wants to do.”

“Why is he doing it!” she asked.

T. X. made a gesture of despair.

“That is one of the mysteries which may never be revealed to me, except—” he pursed his lips and looked thoughtfully at the girl. “There are times,” he said, “when there is a great struggle going on inside a man between all the human and better part of him and the baser professional part of him. One side of me wants to hear this lecture of John Lexman’s very much, the other shrinks from the ordeal.”

“Let us talk it over at lunch,” she said practically, and carried him off.

CHAPTER XIX

One would not readily associate the party of top-booted sewermen who descend nightly to the subterranean passages of London with the stout viceconsul at Durazzo. Yet it was one unimaginative man who lived in Lambeth and had no knowledge that there was such a place as Durazzo who was responsible for bringing this comfortable official out of his bed in the early hours of the morning causing him—albeit reluctantly and with violent and insubordinate language—to conduct certain investigations in the crowded bazaars.

At first he was unsuccessful because there were many Hussein Effendis in Durazzo. He sent an invitation to the American Consul to come over to tiffin and help him.

“Why the dickens the Foreign Office should suddenly be interested in Hussein Effendi, I cannot for the life of me understand.”

“The Foreign Department has to be interested in something, you know,” said the genial American. “I receive some of the quaintest requests from Washington; I rather fancy they only wire you to find if they are there.”

“Why are you doing this!”

“I’ve seen Hakaat Bey,” said the English official. “I wonder what this fellow has been doing? There is probably a wigging for me in the offing.”

At about the same time the sewerman in the bosom of his own family was taking loud and noisy sips from a big mug of tea.

“Don’t you be surprised,” he said to his admiring better half, “if I have to go up to the Old Bailey to give evidence.”

“Lord! Joe!” she said with interest, “what has happened!”

The sewer man filled his pipe and told the story with a wealth of rambling detail. He gave particulars of the hour he had descended the Victoria Street shaft, of what Bill Morgan had said to him as they were going down, of what he had said to Harry Carter as they splashed along the low-roofed tunnel, of how he had a funny feeling that he was going to make a discovery, and so on and so forth until he reached his long delayed climax.

T. X. waited up very late that night and at twelve o’clock his patience was rewarded, for the Foreign Office messenger brought a telegram to him. It was addressed to the Chief Secretary and ran:

“No. 847. Yours 63952 of yesterday’s date. Begins. Hussein Effendi a prosperous merchant of this city left for Italy to place his daughter in convent Marie Theressa, Florence Hussein being Christian. He goes on to Paris. Apply Ralli Theokritis et Cie., Rue de l’Opera. Ends.”

Half an hour later T. X. had a telephone connection through to Paris and was instructing the British police agent in that city. He received a further telephone report from Paris the next morning and one which gave him infinite satisfaction. Very slowly but surely he was gathering together the pieces of this baffling mystery and was fitting them together. Hussein Effendi would probably supply the last missing segments.

At eight o’clock that night the door opened and the man who represented T. X. in Paris came in carrying a travelling ulster on his arm. T. X. gave him a nod and then, as the newcomer stood with the door open, obviously waiting for somebody to follow him, he said,

“Show him in—I will see him alone.”

There walked into his office, a tall man wearing a frock coat and a red fez. He was a man from fifty-five to sixty, powerfully built, with a grave dark face and a thin fringe of white beard. He salaamed as he entered.

“You speak French, I believe,” said T. X. presently.

The other bowed.

“My agent has explained to you,” said T. X. in French, “that I desire some information for the purpose of clearing up a crime which has been committed in this country. I have given you my assurance, if that assurance was necessary, that you would come to no harm as a result of anything you might tell me.”

“That I understand, Effendi,” said the tall Turk; “the Americans and the English have always been good friends of mine and I have been frequently in London. Therefore, I shall be very pleased to be of any help to you.”

T. X. walked to a closed bookcase on one side of the room, unlocked it, took out an object wrapped in white tissue paper. He laid this on the table, the Turk watching the proceedings with an impassive face. Very slowly the Commissioner unrolled the little bundle and revealed at last a long, slim knife, rusted and stained, with a hilt, which in its untarnished days had evidently been of chased silver. He lifted the dagger from the table and handed it to the Turk.

“This is yours, I believe,” he said softly.

The man turned it over, stepping nearer the table that he might secure the advantage of a better light. He examined the blade near the hilt and handed the weapon back to T. X.

“That is my knife,” he said.

T. X. smiled.

“You understand, of course, that I saw ‘Hussein Effendi of Durazzo’ inscribed in Arabic near the hilt.”

The Turk inclined his head.

“With this weapon,” T. X. went on, speaking with slow emphasis, “a murder was committed in this town.”

There was no sign of interest or astonishment, or indeed of any emotion whatever.

“It is the will of God,” he said calmly; “these things happen even in a great city like London.”

“It was your knife,” suggested T. X.

“But my hand was in Durazzo, Effendi,” said the Turk.

He looked at the knife again.

“So the Black Roman is dead, Effendi.”

“The Black Roman?” asked T. X., a little puzzled.

“The Greek they call Kara,” said the Turk; “he was a very wicked man.”

T. X. was up on his feet now, leaning across the table and looking at the other with narrowed eyes.

“How did you know it was Kara?” he asked quickly.

The Turk shrugged his shoulders.

“Who else could it be?” he said; “are not your newspapers filled with the story?”

T. X. sat back again, disappointed and a little annoyed with himself.

“That is true, Hussein Effendi, but I did not think you read the papers.”

“Neither do I, master,” replied the other coolly, “nor did I know that Kara had been killed until I saw this knife. How came this in your possession!”

“It was found in a rain sewer,” said T. X., “into which the murderer had apparently dropped it. But if you have not read the newspapers, Effendi, then you admit that you know who committed this murder.”

The Turk raised his hands slowly to a level with his shoulders.

“Though I am a Christian,” he said, “there are many wise sayings of my father’s religion which I remember. And one of these, Effendi, was, ‘the wicked must die in the habitations of the just, by the weapons of the worthy shall the wicked perish.’ Your Excellency, I am a worthy man, for never have I done a dishonest thing in my life. I have traded fairly with Greeks, with Italians, have with Frenchmen and with Englishmen, also with Jews. I have never sought to rob them nor to hurt them. If I have killed men, God knows it was not because I desired their death, but because their lives were dangerous to me and to mine. Ask the blade all your questions and see what answer it gives. Until it speaks I am as dumb as the blade, for it is also written that ‘the soldier is the servant of his sword,’ and also, ‘the wise servant is dumb about his master’s affairs.’”

T. X. laughed helplessly.

“I had hoped that you might be able to help me, hoped and feared,” he said; “if you cannot speak it is not my business to force you either by threat or by act. I am grateful to you for having come over, although the visit has been rather fruitless so far as I am concerned.”

He smiled again and offered his hand.

“Excellency,” said the old Turk soberly, “there are some things in life that are well left alone and there are moments when justice should be so blind that she does not see guilt; here is such a moment.”

And this ended the interview, one on which T. X. had set very high hopes. His gloom carried to Portman Place, where he had arranged to meet Belinda Mary.

“Where is Mr. Lexman going to give this famous lecture of his?” was the question with which she greeted him, “and, please, what is the subject?”

“It is on a subject which is of supreme interest to me;” he said gravely; “he has called his lecture ‘The Clue of the Twisted Candle.’ There is no clearer brain being employed in the business of criminal detection than John Lexman’s. Though he uses his genius for the construction of stories, were it employed in the legitimate business of police work, I am certain he would make a mark second to none in the world. He is determined on giving this lecture and he has issued a number of invitations. These include the Chiefs of the Secret Police of nearly all the civilized countries of the world. O’Grady is on his way from America, he wirelessed me this morning to that effect. Even the Chief of the Russian police has accepted the invitation, because, as you know, this murder has excited a great deal of interest in police circles everywhere. John Lexman is not only going to deliver this lecture,” he said slowly, “but he is going to tell us who committed the murder and how it was committed.”