On our way back to Waterloo that night d.i.c.k earnestly discussed the situation.
"And what"s your opinion now?" I inquired, as he sat opposite me in the corner of the railway carriage.
d.i.c.k smiled slightly. "Both mother and daughter are connected with the affair, and are in deadly fear," he replied decisively. "While in the punt with Mary Blain I had a long chat with her, and the conclusion I"ve formed is that she knows all about it. Besides, she was very anxious to know your recent movements--what you had been doing during the past week or so."
"I wonder whether she suspects?"
"No, I don"t think so," he answered. "Neither mother nor daughter dream that we are in possession of the secret. You see no one has returned to the place since the fatal night, and, as nothing has appeared in the papers, they naturally conclude that the affair has not yet been discovered."
"They evidently devour almost every morning and evening paper as it arrives down there. Did you notice the heap of papers in the morning-room?" I asked.
"Of course. I kept my eyes well open while there," he replied. "Did it strike you that the plate used at dinner was of exactly the same pattern as that on the table at Phillimore Place, and further, that among a pile of novels in the drawing-room was a book which one would not expect to find in such a place--a work known mainly to toxicologists, for it deals wholly with the potency of poisons?"
"No," I said in surprise, "I didn"t notice either of those things."
"But I did," he went on reflectively. "All these facts go to convince me."
"Of what?"
"That we are working in the right direction to obtain a key to the mystery," he responded. Then suddenly he added: "By the way, that girl Glaslyn is certainly very beautiful. I envied you, old fellow, when you took her for a row."
I smiled. I had determined not to reveal to him her ident.i.ty as the woman whom I had first discovered lifeless, but his natural shrewdness was far greater than mine. He was a born investigator of crime, and had not Fate placed him in a newspaper office, he would, I believe, have become a renowned detective.
"Glaslyn? Eva Glaslyn?" he repeated, as if to himself. "Why, surely that"s the name of the girl you met in St. James"s Park and followed to Hampton--the woman whom you found dead on your first visit to the house with Patterson? Is that really so?" he cried, in sudden amazement.
I nodded, without replying.
"Then, Frank, old chap," he answered in the low, hoa.r.s.e voice of one utterly staggered, "this affair has a.s.sumed such a devilishly complicated phase that I fear we shall never get at the truth. To approach any of those three women would only be to place them on their guard, and without their a.s.sistance we can"t possibly act with success."
"Then what do you suggest?" I asked.
"Suggest? I can suggest nothing," he answered. "The complications on every side are too great--far too great."
"Only Eva Glaslyn can a.s.sist us," I observed. "Yes. She alone can most probably tell us the truth, but her friendship for the Blains is proof positive that her secret is a guilty one, even though she was so near being a victim."
"She was a victim," I declared. "When I saw her she was apparently lifeless, lying cold and still in the chair, with every appearance of one dead. But what causes you to think that her secret is a guilty one?" I asked hastily.
"The Blains undoubtedly are implicated in the matter, and she, their friend, is in possession of their secret," he argued. "As a victim, she would be prompted to expose them if she did not fear exposure herself.
She"s therefore held to enforced silence."
His argument was a very forcible one, and during the remainder of the journey to London I sat back calmly reflecting upon it. It was a theory which had not before occurred to me, but I hesitated to accept it, because I could not believe that upon this woman who held me beneath the spell of her marvellous beauty could there rest any such hideous shadow of guilt. I remembered those clear blue eyes, that fair open countenance, and that frank manner of speech, and refused to give credence to my friend"s allegation.
Slowly pa.s.sed the days. Summer heat increased and in London the silk-hatted world had already turned their thoughts towards the open fields and the sea-beach. The summer holidays were drawing near at hand. How much that brief vacation of a week or fortnight means to the toiling Londoner! and how much more to his ailing wife and puny family, doomed to live year after year in the smoke-halo of some black, grimy street into which the sun never seems to shine, or in some cheap, crowded suburb where the jerry-built houses stand in long, inartistic, parallel rows and the cheap streets swarm with unwashed, shouting offspring! I had arranged to take my holiday in winter and go down to the Riviera, a treat I had long since promised myself, therefore both d.i.c.k and I continued our work through those stifling days, obtaining from Boyd every now and then the results of his latest inquiries. These results, it must be said, were absolutely nil.
I had agreed with d.i.c.k to keep our suspicions entirely to ourselves, therefore we gave no information to Boyd, preferring to carry out our inquiries in our own method rather than seeking his aid. It was well, perhaps, that we did this, for the police too often blunder by displaying too great an energy. I was determined if possible to protect Eva.
At Riverdene, d.i.c.k and I were welcome guests and were often invited to Sunday river-parties, thus showing that any suspicions entertained of us in that quarter had been removed. Time after time I had met Eva, and we had on lots of occasions gone out on the river together, exploring over and over again that winding shaded backwater, and picking lilies and forget-me-nots at the spot where on that memorable evening we had first exchanged confidences.
I had received no invitation to The Hollies, but she had apologised, saying that the unusual heat had prostrated her mother, and that for the present they had been compelled to abandon their picnics. Many were the afternoons and evenings I idled away in a deck-chair on that well-kept lawn, or, accompanied by Mary, Eva, Cleugh and Fred Langdale, who, by the way, turned out to be an insufferable, over-dressed "bounder" who was continually dangling at Eva"s skirts, we would go forth and pay visits to various house-boats up and down stream.
Langdale looked upon me with a certain amount of jealousy, I think, and, truth to tell, was not, as I had imagined, of the milk-and-water genus.
Eva seemed to regard him as a necessary evil, and used him as a tame cat, a kind of body servant to fetch and carry for her. From her remarks to me, however, I had known full well from the first that there was not a shadow of affection on her side. She had explained how she simply tolerated him because companions were few at Hampton and he was a fairly good tennis player, while he, on his part, was unconsciously making an arrant a.s.s of himself in the eyes of all by his efforts to cultivate a drawl that he deemed aristocratic, and to carefully caressing his moustache in an upward direction.
d.i.c.k Cleugh, thorough-going Bohemian that he was, cared but little, I believe, for those riparian gatherings. True, he played tennis, rowed, punted and ate the strawberries and cream with as great a zest as any of us; nevertheless, I knew that he accepted the invitation with but one object, and that he would far rather have strolled in one of the parks with Lily Lowry than row Mary Blain up and down the stream.
Lily often came to our chambers. She was about twenty-two, of a rather Southern type of beauty, with a good figure, a graceful gait, and a decidedly London _chic_. She spoke, however, with that nasal tw.a.n.g which stamps the true South Londoner, and her expressions were not absolutely devoid of the slang of the Newington b.u.t.ts. Yet withal she was a quiet, pleasant girl.
Thus half the month of July went by practically without incident, until one blazing day at noon, when, I went forth into Fleet Street for lunch, I unexpectedly encountered d.i.c.k, hot and hurrying, his hat tilted back.
He had left home very early that morning to work up some "startling discovery" that had been made out at Plaistow, and already hoa.r.s.e-voiced men were crying the "Fourth _Comet_" with the "latest details" he had unearthed.
In reply to his question as to where I was going, I told him that after luncheon I had to go down to Walworth to make some trifling inquiry, whereupon he said--
"Then I wish you"d do a favour for me, old fellow."
"Of course," I answered promptly. "What is it?"
"Call at the Lowrys and tell Lily to meet me at Loughborough Junction at eight to-night, at the usual place. I want to take her to the Crystal Palace to see the fireworks. I was going to wire, but you"ll pa.s.s her father"s place. Will you give her the message?"
"Certainly," I answered. "But is she at home?"
"Yes. She"s got her holidays. Tell her I"m very busy, or I"d have come down myself. Sorry to trouble you."
I promised him to deliver the message, and after eating a chop at the _c.o.c.k_, I walked along to the Gaiety and there took a blue motor-bus, which deposited me outside a small, very dingy shop, a few doors up the Walworth Road from the _Elephant and Castle_, which bore over the little, old-fashioned window the sign, "Morris Lowry, Herbalist."
Displayed to the gaze of the pa.s.ser-by were various a.s.sortments of lozenges and bunches of dried herbs, boxes of pills guaranteed to cure every ill, and a row of dirty gla.s.s bottles filled with yellow liquids, containing filthy-looking specimens of various repulsive objects. The glaring cards in the window advertised such desirable commodities as "Lowry"s Wind Pills," "Lowry"s Cough Tablets," and "Lowry"s Herbal Ointment," while the window itself and the whole shop-front was dirt-encrusted, one pane being cracked across.
As I entered the dark little shop, a mere box of a place smelling strongly of camomile, sarsaparilla and such-like herbs, which hung in dried and dusty confusion all over the ceiling, there arose from a chair the queerest, oddest creature that one might ever meet, even in the diverse crowds of lower London. Morris Lowry, the herbalist, was a strange specimen of distorted humanity, hunch-backed, with an abnormally large, semi-bald head, a scrubby grey beard, and wearing large, old-fashioned, steel-rimmed spectacles, which imparted to him an appearance of learning and distinction. His legs were short and stumpy, his body rather stout, and his arms of inordinate length, while the whole appearance of his sickly, yellow, wizened face was such as might increase one"s belief in the Darwinian theory. Indeed, it was impossible to look upon him without one"s mind reverting to monkeys, for his high cheek bones and square jaws bore a striking resemblance to the facial expression of the ancestral gorilla.
Dressed in black cloak and conical hat he would have made an ideal stage wizard; but attired as he was in greasy black frock coat, and trousers that had long ago pa.s.sed the glossy stage, he was certainly as curious-looking an individual as one could have found on the Surrey side of the Thames. He was no stranger to me, for on several occasions I had called there with d.i.c.k, and had chatted with him. Trade in herbs had dwindled almost to nothing. Nowadays, with all sorts and varieties of well-advertised medicines, the people of Newington, Walworth, and the New Kent Road did not patronise the old-fashioned herbal remedies, which, if truth be told, are perhaps more potent and wholesome than any of the quack nostrums flaunted in the daily papers and on the h.o.a.rdings.
Ten years ago the herbalists did a brisk trade in London, especially among lower cla.s.s housewives who, having come up from the country, were glad enough to obtain the old-world decoctions; but nowadays the herbalists" only source of profit seems to be in the sale of skin soaps and worm tablets.
Old Morris, with his ugly, deformed figure and shining bald head, welcomed me warmly as I entered, and at once invited me into the little shop-parlour beyond, a mere dark cupboard which still retained the odour of the midday meal--Irish stew it must have been--and seemed infested with a myriad of flies. Possibly the fragrance of the herbs attracted them, or else they revelled among the succulent tablets exposed in the open boxes upon the narrow counter. These lozenges, together with his various bottled brews, tinctures of this and of that, the old man manufactured in a kind of dilapidated shed at the rear, which, be it said, often offended the olfactory nerves of the whole neighbourhood when certain herbs were in the process of stewing.
"Lily is out," croaked the weird old fellow, in response to my inquiry, "but I"ll, of course, give her the message. She don"t get much chance nowadays, poor child! When her mother was alive we used to manage to run down to Margit for a week or fortnight in the hot weather. But now--" and he shrugged his shoulders with quite a foreign air. "Well, there"s only me to look after the shop," he added. "And things are not so brisk as they were a few years ago." He spoke with a slight accent, due, Cleugh had told me, to the fact that his mother was French, and he had lived in France a number of years. Few people, however, noticed it, for by many he was believed to be a Jew.
I nodded. I could see that the trade done there was infinitesimal and quite insufficient to pay the rent; besides, was not the fact that Lily had been compelled to go out and earn her own living proof in itself that the strange-looking old fellow was the reverse of prosperous? The herbal trade in London is nearly as dead as the manufacture of that once popular metal known as German silver.
"Lily has gone to see an aunt of hers over at Battersea," the old man explained. "But she"ll be home at five. She"s got her holidays now, and, poor girl, she"s been sadly disappointed. She expected to go down to her married sister at Huntingdon, but couldn"t go because her sister"s laid up with rheumatic fever. So she has to stay at home this year. And this place isn"t much of a change for her."
I glanced around at the dark, close little den, and at the strong-smelling shop beyond, and was fain to admit that he spoke the truth.
"I suppose your friend, Mr. Cleugh, is busy as usual with his murders and his horrors?" he remarked, smiling. "He"s a wonderful acute fellow.
I always read the paper every day, and am generally interested in the results of the inquiries by the _Comet_ man. Half London reads his interviews and latest details."
"Yes," I answered. "He"s kept hard at work always. There seems to be a never-ceasing string of sensations nowadays. As soon as one mystery is elucidated another springs up somewhere else."
"Ah," he answered, his dark eyes gazing at me through his heavy-rimmed gla.s.ses, "it was always so. Never a day goes past without a mystery of some sort or another."
"I suppose," I said, "if the truth were told, more people are poisoned in London than ever the police or the public imagine." I knew that all herbalists were versed in toxicology more or less, and had a vague idea that I might learn something from him.