CHAPTER XVIII
In the preliminary hasty search over the house, it had fallen to Higgsto reach the first floor earlier than his master. Gimblet had left it tohim to examine, while he himself hurried to the upper stories; so thathe now entered the drawing-room for the first time.
He stood for a moment turning his head to right and left, taking inthe principal features of the apartment with quick, comprehensiveglances. Then, of a sudden, the whole figure of the man stiffened; andit was hard to recognise Mr. Gimblet, the dilettante, the frequenterof curiosity shops, the lounger in picture galleries, in the tense,motionless form of Gimblet, the detective, at this moment. He stood, asa pointer stands when it catches the wind of game, erect and stiff, inan attitude of interrupted movement, one knee still bent for the stephe had been in the very act of making; his whole form absolutely still,save for a series of short, successive intakings of the breath, as,with head thrown back and his eyes shining with the keen, well-balancedexcitement of the hunter, he sniffed the air.
What was it he smelt? Something so faint, so indefinite, that afterthe first arresting instant he had lost it altogether; and with it theknowledge of what it was--which in that one second had seemed almosthis--slipped away and was gone, nor could his most strenuous effortrecall it. Oh, for one more whiff of that evasive, troubling odour! Butsniff as he might he could no longer detect anything, and slowly hisattitude relaxed, and he brought other senses to bear upon the scene.
The room was divided, by its shape, into a front and back drawing-room,as is commonly the case in London houses; but the two had been throwninto one and the door led into the narrower back part, so that thelight from the window overlooking the garden, which was obscured bytrees, while it still illumined all that lay on Gimblet's right, hardlypenetrated into the front and larger portion of the place. There theclosed shutters of the three windows leading to the balcony preventedthe light from finding an entrance, and it was very dark. The detectivelit the gas and looked around him.
It was a cheerful, pleasant room; not overcrowded with furniture, andshowing taste and judgment in its arrangement and decoration, thoughthere was nothing very original about it. On the walls, which werecovered with some light coloured paper, were hung three or four goodmodern pictures; the mantelpiece was an eighteenth century one, andon either side of it was placed a Chippendale cabinet, with shelvesfor china, of which some good pieces could be seen through the smallpanes of the glass doors. At the opposite end of the room was a long,low bookcase and, except for a large writing bureau, the rest of thefurniture consisted of sofas and chairs, with one or two small tables.It was a room at once dainty and desolate, gay and forlorn. The emptyflower vases which stood on the tables, the absence of stray books,work, papers, or other signs of human occupancy, gave it a look ofdiscomfort and dreariness; but it was plain, from the bright chintzesand curtains and the soft luxury of the carpet, that it only needed thepresence of its owners to assume a cheerful and lively aspect.
Gimblet began his examination in his usual methodical manner, workinghis way over the floor on hands and knees, gazing at the carpet throughhis lens at any place where there appeared a doubtful mark or change inthe appearance of its surface from that of the surrounding parts. Ashe came to chairs or tables he moved them to one side, and continuedhis quest on the spot where they had stood. There were two smallChesterfield sofas, one of which jutted out at right angles to thefire-place before the right hand window of the front part of the room,the other facing the door with its back against the wall.
When the detective came to the sofa by the fireplace, he pushed it toone side as he had pushed each piece of furniture in its turn, and ashis eyes fell on the floor beneath it a low whistle escaped him: therewas a patch of reddish stain on the green Wilton carpet, about threeinches in diameter, and a smaller spot or two near by of the same rustycolour.
With his head on one side, and his lips still pursed as if to emit awhistling sound, but with no audible noise issuing from them, Gimbletgazed at the stain on the carpet; and the longer he looked the sternerhis face became; the whistling expression vanished, and he opened andshut his mouth with a grinding sound as the teeth met. He rubbed hisfinger over the marks, and the patch seemed to crumble away at histouch, till a hole appeared in the carpet and the white boards of theflooring were exposed to view. He applied his lens to the edges of thehole and plucked at the frayed wool with his fingers. A small piece thathe pulled off he bestowed in one of the little specimen boxes with whichhe had provided himself.
Then he replaced the sofa in its original position, and continued hisexamination of the floor. Under the fender he discovered another ofthe little objects he had picked up on the stairs, but nothing elsedid he find of any interest till he began to turn his attention tothe furniture. Almost the first thing he looked at was the sofa thatconcealed the hole in the carpet; he was drawn back to it with anirresistible attraction. A careful scrutiny, however, did not revealmuch more than the fact that the chintz cover was rather tumbled.Gimblet dug his hand down at the back of the seat, and pulled out thepart of it which was tucked down. As he did so he felt a little lumpunder his fingers, and holding it up saw that it was yet another tinyshining thing for his pill-box collection, and as he looked at the pieceof chintz he had pulled out he perceived several more of the same kind.
They glittered in the gaslight like little diamonds, but had evidentlycome off the spangled tulle of a lady's dress. Gimblet rememberedthat Mrs. Vanderstein's dress had been described by her maid as"_diamantee_"; but then it was possible, indeed probable, that Mrs.Mill, or her friends, possessed gowns of similar material. Gimbletstooped again, and tugged up the rest of the sofa covering from thedepths behind the cushions. This time he pulled it all up; the wholecovering lay spread before him in an untidy, unwieldy mass, and from theend, as he plucked it out, there shot two small objects, which fell tothe floor at his feet. In a moment he had lifted them from the groundand stood staring at them: they were a piece of crushed and folded paperand a minute powder puff.
The detective unfolded the paper, and held it to the light; it was asheet of thick white notepaper, and on it was embossed a crown anddevice in heavy gold lettering. Below these was written in a fine,slanting foreign hand
"Most adored, I count the hours, the minutes, till I shall hear for the first time the sound of your voice. Heaven be praised that I have not long to wait, and you, whom heaven has sent to me, accept the thanks of my grateful heart. I send this by Madame Q."
The signature that followed made Gimblet open his eyes. "Felipe," inconjunction with the crown at the head of the paper and the foreigncharacter of the penmanship, could refer to one person only. Gimbletwas well aware that the Prince of Targona was honouring London with hispresence. He glanced carefully round the room to make sure no one wasnear, folded the paper carefully, and placed it in his notebook. Then heturned his attention to the powder puff.
It was an ordinary little powder puff of pink silk and white down--verysmall, very dainty, if very commonplace. Gimblet turned it over andover, but could see nothing about it which stamped it as differentfrom other powder puffs. Not that it was a curio in the peculiaritiesof which he was very well versed; he could not help realising that inthe matter of powder puffs his education had been neglected. A Frenchdetective, he told himself sadly, would have read a whole history inthis soft toy. He brushed it across the back of his hand, but it leftno mark; he shook it into the palm, but no powder fell from it. It wasplain to him that, whatever uses it might have served in the whitehands that had formerly clasped it, it was not of any use at all inhis, and in his irritation he was inclined to hurl it from him. But hismethodical habits prevailed and he felt in his coat for a box to containit. And suddenly, with what seemed like an involuntary movement, helifted the hand that held the powder puff, and held it to his nose.
"Ah," he sighed, and it was a sigh of deep content. Then he storedaway the precious fluffy thing, and put it in his pocket. He finishedthe tour of the fu
rniture without further discovery; at the end ofit he requested Tremmels to read out the contents of the room fromthe inventory, as he had done at the conclusion of his visits to eachroom or landing, checking off each object as the clerk read out itsdescription.
"I am in hopes," he said to Sir Gregory, "of finding something notmentioned in the inventory, which we might take to be the propertyof Mr. West. But so far there is nothing that can possibly be his,not so much as a toothbrush. He certainly seems to be a leader of thesimple life." Then he turned to Tremmels again. "Is there no mentionof the chair covers?" he asked. But the young man only stared at himopen-mouthed, and he seized the book from his hand.
"Let me see," he murmured, running a finger down the page. "Here we are.'Two Chesterfield sofas and five arm-chairs with loose chintz covers.'Might mean anything. Look here!" he turned to the clerk again, "you wentover the inventory. What do you remember about that sofa?" He pointed tothe one opposite the door, which, unlike the other sofas and chairs, hadno chintz covering. Tremmels was flurried by the detective's sharp tone.
"I--I don't remember anything at all," he stammered.
"What, don't you remember that it had a cover?"
Gimblet's second question was still more sharply spoken. The clerk shota glance at him in which suspicion, timidity, and bewilderment wereoddly mixed, and he answered stubbornly, repeating his former words asif he imagined a trap were being laid for him.
"I don't remember anything about it." His pale face wore an expressionmore wooden than ever.
The detective turned from him with an impatient movement, and stoodlooking down at the sofa with a frown on his face. It was exactly thesame as the one in the front part of the room, but, instead of a coverof pink and white chintz, it displayed only the upholstery with whichit had been originally covered by the makers: a kind of white tapestrywith grey flowers and flecks of red, in general colouring not unlikethe chintz on the other sofas and chairs, but tightly fitting andleaving exposed the bare legs of brown varnished wood, which were of aparticularly ugly shape.
"Come," said Gimblet at last, "I must go downstairs."
"What did you find?" Sir Gregory asked him anxiously as they went down,followed at a distance by the clerk, "what did you find by the othersofa?"
The detective hesitated an instant.
"Sir Gregory," he said, "there is something here, some story to be read,if I can read it. The walls are trying to speak to me, I believe, if Icould only listen rightly. There are things very plain that I can see,but not enough of them, and there is something that I don't understand.But what I have seen points to sinister things, and I must warn you thatI don't like the look of them."
"Mr. Gimblet!" cried Sir Gregory. "What do you mean?"
"Yes, Sir Gregory," said the detective. "I am very much more--uneasyabout your friend than I have yet been. I fear that, when I am in aposition to give you news of her, it may be very bad. You may have tostand a shock. Don't you think it would be best if you went home andwaited till I came to you?"
But, though on Sir Gregory's face there crept a look of terrified grief,he would not go.
The dining-room told nothing, Gimblet's researches there were vain, andhe soon adjourned to the room behind it, which seemed to be a libraryor smoking-room. The shutters, as they had seen from the garden, werefastened, but by this time the last of the long summer twilight wasfading and the night promised to fall dark and windy. Gimblet's firstact was to light the gas.
It was a small room, this back room, where, no doubt, Mr. Mill, whenhe was at home, was accustomed to smoke his pipe and attend to hiscorrespondence. Two of the walls were lined with bookshelves; one sidewas taken up by the window; and on the fourth, opposite the door andabove the fire-place, were hung a quantity of mezzotints framed insombre black. They surrounded a small oil painting that filled the placeof honour immediately over the chimney piece, and which caught Gimblet'sinterested eye directly. It appeared to be an example of the early Dutchschool, and he was seized with the desire to examine it more closely.The fire-place below it was lined with old blue and white tiles, and atthese too he cast an envious glance, but the feelings of the collectorwere subservient just now to those of the detective, and he turned tothe more everyday furniture of the room.
There was not very much in it: a couple of arm-chairs stood one on eachside of the fire-place, and before the window was a large writing tablewith inkstand and blotting book disposed upon it, together with a fewodds and ends. Even with these the table looked empty; one missed thepapers that by rights should have been scattered there. As Gimblet stoodbeside it, he was conscious of the cold draught that whistled by hisear, and it was then that he first looked toward the window.
"It must be open," he said to himself, and then, as he looked closer:"By Jingo!"
It was a sash window of the old-fashioned kind, with a dozen or sowood-framed panes to each half of it, and the usual metal catch holdingthe top and bottom in position together when the window was shut. Itwas shut now, and the cold air that pervaded the place entered throughcracks in the shutters, and after that encountered no further obstacle,for the top middle pane of the lower sash was destitute of glass.
Gimblet pushed away the table and examined the empty frameworkcarefully, touching the edges with an incautious finger, which, however,he withdrew rather hurriedly and transferred to his mouth. He lookedat the floor; and then, following his usual custom, knelt down on it,lens in hand. The gaslight was obscured by the shadow of the writingtable, and he had recourse to the aid of a pocket electric torch. He wassatisfied with what he saw, apparently, for he soon rose and turned tothe window again. He unfastened the catch, and placing one hand on theframework sought to raise the sash, but it stuck stiffly, and both handsand a good deal of strength had to be exerted before he was able to liftit.
Then he flashed the light of the little torch on the window sill, andtook from it a splinter of broken glass. After this he pursued hisinspection of the room and its contents. There was, as has been said,little enough in it except books, but everything there was came in forthe usual close scrutiny; the waste paper basket was not forgotten, norwere the empty grate and coal scuttle. In the end, after comparing thethings mentioned in the inventory with those in the room, Gimblet shutthe door into the hall, and ran his lens hastily over its woodwork.Apparently he saw on it more than he expected, for he returned moreslowly to the task and spent several minutes examining some small spotsof dirt, which were visible to the naked eye on the white paint.
At last he had done, and there only remained the basement to beinvestigated. This took some time, and the results disappointed him,with the exception of a cupboard under the stairs where he discovered ahousemaid's dustpan full of pieces of broken glass. He seized on it witheager excitement, and examined the surface of the tin very carefullywith his lens; only to put it down again with an irritated clicking ofthe tongue.
Sir Gregory watched these proceedings in a stricken silence; hishopes had turned to lead at the words Gimblet had addressed to him onleaving the drawing room; as each successive door was thrown open hefelt a tightening of the heart and a sick fear of being confrontedwith some terrible sight. Now he would almost have preferred that thedetective should find no clue, so much he dreaded the solution to whichhe instinctively felt that these small discoveries were irresistiblyleading.
The face of the clerk, who equally shared the role of silent onlooker,wore an expression of excited interest, except when he was addressed,when it relaxed into its usual wooden apathy. At other times he peeredover Sir Gregory's shoulder with feverish, straining eyes, evidentlypossessed by all the passion for sensation in any form which is commonto his class; though, that he was as much in the dark as Sir Gregory,with regard to the conclusions suggested to the detective by thevarious objects he examined, was clear from the look of something likeelation with which he watched the minute attention bestowed upon theunprofitable dustpan.
Gimblet returned this article to its place, and drew out, one by on
e,the other things in the cupboard: a water-can, a bucket, a scrubbingbrush, and other odds and ends. The last thing he brought to light wasa crumpled ball of newspaper, stuffed away at the back of some broomsand pails. This did not look interesting; and, while Sir Gregory sawwith relief the handling of anything which gave him breathing space,Tremmel's face fell.
Gimblet, however, was too methodical to ignore anything, even sounpromising an object as an old newspaper. He opened it out on the floorof the passage, unrolling the crumpled pages and spreading them flat onthe boards. In the middle of the ball was a small quantity of dust, orrather what looked more like earth. Gimblet scooped it up in one handand let it fall through his fingers into the palm of the other; it wasblack and fine, but gritty to the touch. With a puzzled expression hestowed some of it away in one of his little boxes, and put the rest inhis pocket, wrapped in a piece of the newspaper. Then he disappearedinto the coal cellar, which was the only place left that he had notvisited. He found nothing there.
By this time it was nearly ten o'clock.
They went back into the hall and Gimblet opened the door of the littlelibrary.
"Sit down in here, Sir Gregory," he said, "you have been on your feetfor hours"--and indeed the baronet was dropping with fatigue--. "I amjust going out into the garden, and you may as well rest a little. Asfor you," he added to Tremmels, "you can go home if you like. I've donewith the inventory."
"There's the key," the clerk reminded him, "and, if you don't mind mysitting down here in the hall for a few minutes before I go ... I'mfeeling a bit tired myself, sir."
He certainly looked it, but then he had looked so ill from thebeginning that the effect of these hours of standing about and thelack of food, which told heavily upon Sir Gregory, hardly added to themiserable aspect of Tremmels, whatever he might be feeling.
Gimblet told him to sit down, and leaving them went out into thegarden. He walked round to the back, and along the path which led tothe toolshed. Going into it he hunted, by the light of his torch, amongthe implements that leant against the wall; but what he sought was notthere, and he retreated, unsatisfied. As he returned slowly to thehouse, he moved his lamp from side to side, so that the light shone onthe flower beds between which he walked and not on the path beneath hisfeet; it was as if he hoped to find what he wanted among the flowers.
Turning the corner of the wall, he saw a dark figure in the act ofshutting the further gate; it came towards him and he recognised theartist, Brampton.
"You work late, Mr. Gimblet," he said, as he met the detective. "Anydiscoveries?"
Gimblet did not reply; he was looking at his watch.
"It _is_ late," he said after a pause; and then half to himself, "late!too late, and too dark," he murmured; and again, "perhaps it is justas well. It will do Sir Gregory no harm to wait till to-morrow for badnews."
"What," said Brampton, "you have bad news for him?"
"I fear there will be bad news--to-morrow," said Gimblet.
The night was very dark, for clouds had gathered afresh, and the windwas getting up again. The leaves of the trees in the street rustledloudly as if in protest; from a distance the tinkle of a barrel organsounded fitfully in the intervals between gusts of wind.
"It's as cold as winter," grumbled Brampton.
Gimblet was staring up at the front of the house, and when he spokeBrampton was struck by the change in his voice.
"Of course!" he cried, "the crumpled newspaper! What have I been about?Now, ah, now I know! Mr. Brampton," he said, moving, so that he facedthe other in the darkness, "there is something very terrible here;something to be done that is quite unfit for Sir Gregory to take partin. I am only too well convinced that a crime has been committed in thishouse, a gruesome and dastardly crime, which but for the merest accidentmight not have been discovered for weeks. No ordinary criminals havebeen at work here; we have to deal with some scoundrel so cold-bloodedand resourceful, so prudent, and so full of forethought and vilecunning, as I do not think I have ever encountered before. What is yournerve like, Mr. Brampton? I see you are muscularly a strong man, and Ishall have need of help. What do you say? Can you give me the assistanceI want, or shall I go and find the policeman on this beat?"
The solemn words of the detective, and still more acutely the grave andurgent note in his voice, thrilled the imagination of the artist, andawoke in him a horrified perception of the seriousness of the situation,which hitherto he had looked on with an eye, half amused, half derisive,as we may contemplate a game of Red Indians played by some earnestand dramatic children. The spirit of adventure cried aloud in him,and overcame the shrinking of a refined nature from contact with thehorrible.
"You can rely on me," was all he said, and thereupon Gimblet ran up tothe door, calling to Higgs to open it.
The other men were sitting as he had left them, Sir Gregory in anarm-chair by the library fire-place, and the clerk in the hall; bothdrooped in attitudes of extreme weariness.
"Will you please stay where you are a little longer?" Gimblet said toSir Gregory. "I am going upstairs with Mr. Brampton, to see if he cantell me one or two things I want to know about the ordinary disposal ofthe furniture; and after that we will go home, unless you will be guidedby me and do so at once. No? Well, we shall not be long. We shall notwant you," he added to Tremmels, who was struggling stiffly to rise fromhis seat.
At Gimblet's words he sank back again, and leant his head weakly againstthe wall.
With a sign to Higgs and Brampton to follow him, Gimblet went upstairs.
The gas was still burning in the drawing-room, and the door stood openas he had left it. Gimblet paused on the threshold and drew Brampton'sattention to the sofa opposite.
"Do you remember," he asked, "whether that sofa had a cover like theother before Mr. Mill went away?"
Brampton looked at it doubtfully.
"I can't say I do really," he said. "I ought to know, of course, butI don't feel quite sure. You see, the colouring is so much like thatof the chintzes. One might never notice it. Still, the legs are veryugly; I think I should have observed them. And it is not like Mrs. Millto leave an ugly thing so plainly displayed. But on the whole I'm notcertain about it."
"Don't you feel," said Gimblet, "that there is something terrible,something fearful, in those shining brown pieces of wood? Their uglinessshould be decently covered. Unfortunately, I am afraid I know where tolook for their covering."
He led the way to one of the French windows of the front room and threwit open. Unfastening the shutters, which still barred the way, he flungthem back and went out on to the balcony, followed by the two men.
It was, as he had seen from the ground, an unusually broad one, andextended across the whole width of the house. A low wall about nineinches high ran round its edge, supporting a balustrade of stone. Alarge green painted wooden box, or trough, about ten feet long by a yardwide, and as tall as the balustrade, was planted with flowers, which didnot appear to be in a very flourishing condition.
By the light of the street lamp they could see that the geraniums'petals were turning black, and that the marguerites hung their headson stalks from which all vigour seemed to have departed. Within thebalustrade the black shadows lay like a pool of ink, and the floor ofthe balcony was quite invisible, except where the open window throughwhich they had stepped let out a narrow stream of light.
"Open the shutters of the other windows," Gimblet said to Higgs.
When this was done they could see better. To Brampton's amazementGimblet's next act was to grasp one of the geraniums and pull it up bythe roots; a daisy followed, and in a few minutes he had torn up everyplant. Brampton, as he stood watching, noticed how easily they came up.
Then Gimblet called to him.
"Now, Mr. Brampton, if you and Higgs will take that end of the box, Ican manage this one. I want to tilt it up a little."
It needed all the efforts of the three men to move the box, full to thebrim of soil as it was. Panting and heaving, they shifted it first awa
yfrom the balustrade, and tilted it towards the wall of the house. Theearth poured out as the angle increased, and in a minute the floor wasdeep in it.
"Gently, gently," said Gimblet. "Look, what is that?" and he pointed tosomething white, which was poking out through the earth in the box.
His electric torch flashed upon it, and the others, balancing the tiltedflower box on its edge, peered in, and saw that it was a bit of pink andwhite chintz.
It seemed a long while before Gimblet spoke. He stood as if turned tostone, and Brampton felt an indefinable horror stealing over him, adread of he knew not what, but which he seemed to be conscious was insome way a reflection or telepathic transference of the other's unspokenthoughts.
At last with an obvious effort Gimblet straightened himself.
"We must tilt out a little more earth," he said in a low tone, "verycarefully now."
Very cautiously they raised the side of the stand again, and a rush ofsoil poured over the edge; the little patch of white they had seen in acorner became a large piece, and almostly instantly it was plain to themall that the greater part of the box was full of it. Leaving the othersto manage the box, which was now easily steadied, Gimblet ran round andknelt at its side, scooping out handfuls of garden mould and disclosingwhat looked like a very long, bulky bundle of flowered chintz.
Suddenly, in a voice hardly above a whisper, Brampton broke the silence.
"My God!" he said, pointing, and staring with horrified eyes.
From the corner of the wrapper a hand protruded, half covered withearth; it was a white and shapely hand, the hand of a woman.
"Do you see it?" whispered Brampton again, and leant shaking against thewall.
"It's a hand," said Higgs, troubled but stolid.
Gimblet was very pale, and he took a quick breath as he braced himselfto lift the enveloping chintz. The lighted windows cast three streaksof light out into the darkness and threw grotesque distorted shadows ofthe men upon the coping of the balcony. A sudden gust of wind made thetrees in the street moan and shiver as though they had been swept by thepassing broom of some night-riding hag; all around them the darknessgathered close like a wicked thing that would if it dared swallow up thetiny protecting lights men burn in self-defence.
Gimblet felt himself struggling against some such malevolent influences;half conscious fears, some sensation of evil presences in the air,gibing, mocking, clustering round to gloat over the results of earthlyvillainy, seemed to paralyse him; and he had to call up his reservesof will power before, after a moment's hesitation, he bent forward andunrolled the chintz covering.
Inside it was the body of a young woman. Long black hair lay in masseson her shoulders and streamed over the single white garment she wore.The face was so terribly disfigured as to be quite unrecognisable.
With a shudder Gimblet drew the wrapping over her again.
"Vitriol," he muttered, and became aware, as he spoke, of some onebehind him in the opening of the window.
Before he could turn, a heartstricken cry sounded in his ear, and he wasnot in time to catch Sir Gregory, who staggered back in the embrasure,and from there slid fainting to the ground. As Gimblet sprang to hishelp, he had a fleeting vision of a ghastly face and a crouching figurein the back of the drawing-room: it was the face of Tremmels, the clerk,but so wild and white with terror, so distorted by the shock of what hehad seen as to be almost like that of another man.
Suspecting from the noise made by the opening shutters, followed by thesudden and prolonged silence, that something was happening on the floorabove them, and unable any longer to bear the suspense and curiosityaccentuated by waiting and inactivity, Sir Gregory, followed by theclerk, had crept upstairs into the drawing-room without attracting theattention of Gimblet or his assistants, and the horror of what they hadseen was too much for both of them.
As with the help of Higgs Gimblet lifted the inanimate form of thebaronet from where it had dropped, a sudden loud noise from the streetbelow made them nearly let fall their burden; and it was a second beforeany of them realised that the sound was only the first jangling bar ofa popular music hall tune. The barrel organ they had heard a quarter ofan hour earlier had wandered into Scholefield Avenue, and, attractedwithout doubt by the lighted windows, had thought fit to draw up beforeNo. 13 and there begin its headlong plunge into melody. Half therollicking air it was playing had been thumped forth, with all the usualdin of banging bass and clanking scales, before any one of those whostood above it in the grim presence of death sufficiently recovered hispresence of mind to be able to stop it.
Telling the clerk curtly not to be an ass, but to pull himself togetherand follow them, Gimblet, with the help of Higgs and Brampton, carriedSir Gregory out of the fatal house and into No. 15, the home of theartist. Here they gave him over to the care of Mrs. Brampton, a capable,bustling woman with common-sense written all over her, to whom herhusband explained in guarded terms as much of the situation as wasinevitable.
"There has been a terrible tragedy next door, my dear," he told her."This poor gentleman has fainted on learning of the death of hisfriend," and the kind-hearted, sensible creature took charge of SirGregory without wasting precious time in questions.
At his request, Brampton conducted the detective to the telephone, whileHiggs was sent out to look for a policeman.
"Is that Scotland Yard?" Gimblet was asking, as the artist shut the dooron him and returned to his wife.
By the time the detective had finished telephoning, Higgs was back withtwo policemen, the one he had found in the next street having whistledfor a comrade. Gimblet went with them to No. 13, and together theyentered the silent drawing-room, where the gas was still flaring and thewindows stood open to the night like three black doors to a villainousand tragic world. With the help of the new-comers the body of the deadwoman was lifted out of the flower box and carried into the house,where, still enveloped in the chintz cover, it was gently deposited onone of the sofas. For a moment they turned back the wrapping, whileGimblet searched hastily for some clue that should have inadvertentlybeen enclosed in it, but there was nothing besides the body and the onegarment in which it was clad.
"See," he murmured in a low voice, pointing to an oblong incision atthe edge of the chemise, "they have cut away the linen there. No doubtthe name, or initial, was embroidered in that place. What fine linenit is; and this lace trimming is as delicate as a cobweb! If we hadnothing else to go by, this would show that the murdered woman was richand luxury-loving. Most women, if they had such lace, would keep it toadorn their dresses with."
He drew the covering over her again; and, going back to the balcony,stood looking at the half-empty box and the mound of earth that washeaped upon the floor.
"They must have had a job to clear away the surplus soil," he remarkedto Higgs, who had followed him. "I suspect it was carried down to thegarden, bucketful by bucketful, and the last handful or two were sweptup into a newspaper. I found some trace of it in a cupboard downstairs."
Leaving the police to guard the house, they went in search of SirGregory, and found him so far recovered as to be sent home in a taxi inthe care of Higgs. The clerk also was seen safely started on the way tohis lodgings, where, Gimblet thought to himself, he would probably takethe brandy bottle to bed with him.
"You will have to attend the inquest, you know," he said to him as hewas departing. "It may be to-morrow or the next day. Good evening, anddon't stay awake all night."
After renewed thanks and apologies to the Bramptons, Gimblet foundanother taxi, and, getting in, gave the driver the address of JoeSidney's rooms.
"I think," he said to himself, "it's just about time I paid that younggentleman a visit."
Mrs. Vanderstein's jewels Page 18