"I saw you smile when I used the word "murdered,"" continued the man in the corner, growing quite excited now that he was approaching the denouement of his story. "I know that the public, after the magistrate had discharged Arthur Greenhill, were quite satisfied to think that the mystery in Percy Street was a case of accident-or suicide."
"No," replied Polly, "there could be no question of suicide, for two very distinct reasons."
He looked at her with some degree of astonishment. She supposed that he was amazed at her venturing to form an opinion of her own.
"And may I ask what, in your opinion, these reasons are?" he asked very sarcastically.
"To begin with, the question of money," she said-"has any more of it been traced so far?"
"Not another 5 note," he said with a chuckle; "they were all cashed in Paris during the Exhibition, and you have no conception how easy a thing that is to do, at any of the hotels or smaller agents de change."
"That nephew was a clever blackguard," she commented.
"You believe, then, in the existence of that nephew?"
"Why should I doubt it? Some one must have existed who was sufficiently familiar with the house to go about in it in the middle of the day without attracting any one"s attention."
"In the middle of the day?" he said with a chuckle.
"Any time after 8.30 in the morning."
"So you, too, believe in the "caretaker, wrapped up in a shawl," cleaning her front steps?" he queried.
"But-"
"It never struck you, in spite of the training your intercourse with me must have given you, that the person who carefully did all the work in the Rubens Studios, laid the fires and carried up the coals, merely did it in order to gain time; in order that the bitter frost might really and effectually do its work, and Mrs. Owen be not missed until she was truly dead."
"But-" suggested Polly again.
"It never struck you that one of the greatest secrets of successful crime is to lead the police astray with regard to the time when the crime was committed. That was, if you remember, the great point in the Regent"s Park murder.
"In this case the "nephew," since we admit his existence, would-even if he were ever found, which is doubtful-be able to prove as good an alibi as young Greenhill."
"But I don"t understand-"
"How the murder was committed?" he said eagerly. "Surely you can see it all for yourself, since you admit the "nephew"-a scamp, perhaps-who sponges on the good-natured woman. He terrorises and threatens her, so much so that she fancies her money is no longer safe even in the Birkbeck Bank. Women of that cla.s.s are apt at times to mistrust the Bank of England. Anyway, she withdraws her money. Who knows what she meant to do with it in the immediate future?
"In any case, she wishes to secure it after her death to a young man whom she likes, and who has known how to win her good graces. That afternoon the nephew begs, entreats for more money; they have a row; the poor woman is in tears, and is only temporarily consoled by a pleasant visit at the theatre.
"At 2 o"clock in the morning young Greenhill parts from her. Two minutes later the nephew knocks at the door. He comes with a plausible tale of having missed his last train, and asks for a "shake down" somewhere in the house. The good-natured woman suggests a sofa in one of the studios, and then quietly prepares to go to bed. The rest is very simple and elementary. The nephew sneaks into his aunt"s room, finds her standing in her nightgown; he demands money with threats of violence; terrified, she staggers, knocks her head against the gas bracket, and falls on the floor stunned, while the nephew seeks for her keys and takes possession of the 800. You will admit that the subsequent mise en scene-is worthy of a genius.
"No struggle, not the usual hideous accessories round a crime. Only the open windows, the bitter north-easterly gale, and the heavily falling snow-two silent accomplices, as silent as the dead.
"After that the murderer, with perfect presence of mind, busies himself in the house, doing the work which will ensure that Mrs. Owen shall not be missed, at any rate, for some time. He dusts and tidies; some few hours later he even slips on his aunt"s skirt and bodice, wraps his head in a shawl, and boldly allows those neighbours who are astir to see what they believe to be Mrs. Owen. Then he goes back to her room, resumes his normal appearance and quietly leaves the house."
"He may have been seen."
"He undoubtedly was seen by two or three people, but no one thought anything of seeing a man leave the house at that hour. It was very cold, the snow was falling thickly, and as he wore a m.u.f.fler round the lower part of his face, those who saw him would not undertake to know him again."
"That man was never seen nor heard of again?" Polly asked.
"He has disappeared off the face of the earth. The police are searching for him, and perhaps some day they will find him-then society will be rid of one of the most ingenious men of the age."
CHAPTER x.x.xVI
THE END
He had paused, absorbed in meditation. The young girl also was silent. Some memory too vague as yet to take a definite form was persistently haunting her-one thought was hammering away in her brain, and playing havoc with her nerves. That thought was the inexplicable feeling within her that there was something in connection with that hideous crime which she ought to recollect, something which-if she could only remember what it was-would give her the clue to the tragic mystery, and for once ensure her triumph over this self-conceited and sarcastic scarecrow in the corner.
He was watching her through his great bone-rimmed spectacles, and she could see the knuckles of his bony hands, just above the top of the table, fidgeting, fidgeting, fidgeting, till she wondered if there existed another set of fingers in the world which could undo the knots his lean ones made in that tiresome piece of string.
Then suddenly-a propos of nothing, Polly remembered-the whole thing stood before her, short and clear like a vivid flash of lightning:-Mrs. Owen lying dead in the snow beside her open window; one of them with a broken sash-line, tied up most scientifically with a piece of string. She remembered the talk there had been at the time about this improvised sash-line.
That was after young Greenhill had been discharged, and the question of suicide had been voted an impossibility.
Polly remembered that in the ill.u.s.trated papers photographs appeared of this wonderfully knotted piece of string, so contrived that the weight of the frame could but tighten the knots, and thus keep the window open. She remembered that people deduced many things from that improvised sash-line, chief among these deductions being that the murderer was a sailor-so wonderful, so complicated, so numerous were the knots which secured that window-frame.
But Polly knew better. In her mind"s eye she saw those fingers, rendered doubly nervous by the fearful cerebral excitement, grasping at first mechanically, even thoughtlessly, a bit of twine with which to secure the window; then the ruling habit strongest through all, the girl could see it; the lean and ingenious fingers fidgeting, fidgeting with that piece of string, tying knot after knot, more wonderful, more complicated, than any she had yet witnessed.
"If I were you," she said, without daring to look into that corner where he sat, "I would break myself of the habit of perpetually making knots in a piece of string."
He did not reply, and at last Polly ventured to look up-the corner was empty, and through the gla.s.s door beyond the desk, where he had just deposited his few coppers, she saw the tails of his tweed coat, his extraordinary hat, his meagre, shrivelled-up personality, fast disappearing down the street.
Miss Polly Burton (of the Evening Observer) was married the other day to Mr. Richard Frobisher (of the London Mail). She has never set eyes on the man in the corner from that day to this.
FINISH