The Complete Works of Arthur Morrison (Illustrated). Arthur Morrison

I’ll give him half a crown for himself and the money to pay for a telegram on his way. He knows nothing essential, of course?”

      “No—only that his master is in some sort of trouble, and warned him that he might be followed.”

      “That is good. I shall telegraph to Detective-Inspector Plummer, of Scotland Yard. All right—I quite understand that all I have heard is confidential. I shall tell Plummer nothing till I may—indeed, as yet I have very little to tell that would help him. But I think it will be well to have the police within call—we may want them at a moment’s notice; I have no police powers, you see, and Plummer has the Denson case in hand. I will ask him to be here, at this house, before a quarter to eight, if you will allow me.”

      And so the telegram went to Plummer, and Hewitt, accepting the rector’s invitation to an early dinner before starting on their visit, resigned himself to wait. He did not like the waste of time, as he frankly told Mr. Potswood. He would have preferred to see Mason at once, at any risk, and to take what means he thought necessary without delay. But as it seemed that the risk was to be chiefly Mason’s, and as Mason knew all of which both he and the rector were ignorant, Mason must be allowed to choose his own time.

      The excellent Mr. Potswood endured agonies of suspense, though he also insisted that Mason’s wishes must be observed exactly. “What is it all—what can it be?” he ejaculated again and again. “What dreadful influence can thus compass a man about, here in London, in these times?”

      It was autumn, and night fell early. Dinner was over at last, and they had scarcely left the table when Plummer arrived, anxious and eager.

      “You’ll have to trust me a little, Plummer,” Hewitt said, when he had made him known to the rector. “I can tell you nothing now—know nothing, in fact, or very little more than nothing. The fact is, I’m going to see a man who promises information to me alone, in confidence, as his client, and I don’t know how long I may have to keep you in the dark. But this is where the trail lies hot, and I know that’s where you want to be. More, if you’re wanted suddenly you’ll be at hand. You have a man or two with you, I suppose, as I suggested?”

      “Three of the best of them. They will follow us up. Is it far?”

      “No, close enough. It is a house in a walled garden—not a high wall. We go in at a gate from the lane behind, and I think you should wait at that gate, and put your men at hand. We mustn’t go in as a crowd. The rector had better go first, and you and I will follow on the opposite side of the road.”

      So the procession was formed, and it was still some three minutes short of eight o’clock when Hewitt and Plummer joined the clergyman at the door in the garden wall behind Mason’s house. The door was ajar as had been promised in Mason’s note. Leaving Plummer on guard without, Martin Hewitt and the rector stepped as silently as possible through the little kitchen garden and across a strip of lawn toward where a dull light illuminated the conservatory, at the right-hand end of the house. The door of the conservatory was ajar also, and this the rector pushed open.

      “Miss Creswick!” the rector called, in a loud whisper. “Miss Creswick!” And with that a girl appeared within.

      “Oh, Mr. Potswood,” she said, “I’m so glad you’ve come! I can’t think what’s wrong with poor uncle! I’m afraid he must be going mad! He is terrified at something, and he has been getting worse, till he could hardly speak or walk. Dr. Lawson has been—about an hour ago, and since then uncle has been much quieter, in his study.”

      They were entering the dimly-lighted drawing-room now. “Dr. Lawson?” queried the rector. “Rather an unusual visitor, isn’t he? How long has he been gone?”

      Miss Creswick flushed slightly through all her paleness and grief. “I don’t know,” she said. “He let himself out, I fancy. He said he could not stay long when he came, but I didn’t hear him go; I have been upstairs, and the servants are in the kitchen—they say uncle’s mad, and I’m really afraid he is!”

      They left the drawing-room, and walked along the corridor and the hall to the opposite side of the house, where the study lay. Miss Creswick tapped gently at the door, but there was no answer. She tapped again, louder, and then came the faint sound of a quick step on the carpet, and then a slight scraping noise, as when a door is closed over a carpet it will scarcely pass. “That’s the window into the garden,” said Miss Creswick. “Why is he going out? Uncle! Uncle Jacob!”

      But now the silence was wholly unbroken. Hewitt snatched quickly at the door-handle. “Locked!” he said. “Come—the quickest way into the garden!”

      They ran out at the front door, and round toward the study window. It was a French window, exactly at the opposite end of the house to the conservatory, and now the gas-light streamed out through one half of it, which stood curtainless and ajar, while the curtain was drawn across the other half. Hewitt was the least familiar with the place, but he was quickest on his legs, and more seriously alarmed than the others. He reached the window first—and instantly turned and thrust the rector back against Miss Creswick. “Quick! take her away,” he said; “we are too late!” and in the same moment, even as Hewitt dashed over the threshold, he snatched a whistle from his pocket, and blew his hardest.

      There on the floor lay Mason, his face dreadful and staring and black; tight in his neck was the band of a tourniquet, and fresh and wet on his forehead was the Red Triangle.

      Hewitt snatched at the screw of the tourniquet behind the neck, and loosened it as quickly as hands could turn. But it was too late. Too late, the examining surgeon afterwards said, by a quarter of an hour.

      Plummer was at the window with his men at his heels even before the tourniquet was half unscrewed.

      “Round the wall of the garden,” shouted Hewitt, “and whistle up the police! He’s only this moment out!”

      The house was alive with shouts and screams. The rector came running back, and Hewitt, busy with his useless attempt at restoration, called now for a doctor. People were scampering in the street, and Hewitt left the victim to the care of the rector, and himself joined Plummer, all in fewer seconds than it may be told in.

      But Plummer and his men were beaten, for nothing—not so much as a moving shadow—was seen in the garden or about the walls. Worse, the general trampling would obliterate possible tracks. Plummer set a guard of police about the wall, and came in for consultation with Hewitt.

      The body was carried into another room, and Hewitt and Plummer began an examination of the study.

      “No signs of a struggle,” commented Plummer, “and there was no noise, they say. That’s very odd.”

      “From what I have seen and heard to-day,” said Hewitt, “it is as I should have expected. I believe the man was almost killed by terror before he was strangled—dazed, stricken dumb, paralysed, deafened by it—everything but blinded, poor wretch. And to have been blinded would have been a mercy.”

      And then, as they made their examination systematically, calmly and without flurry, Hewitt told the whole tale of his day’s adventures, together with all he had heard from the rector. “The man’s dead,” he said, “and his confidence is at an end. Indeed, I never had it—the case, so far as I am concerned, is over before I have even touched it. I haven’t had a chance, Plummer; and the thing is deep and dark, deep and dark. Oh, if only the man had let me come to him in the daylight, spite of all! This might all have been averted…. There has been a close search here, too. See how everything is turned over. But, stay!”

      A low fire smouldered in the grate, and on it lay ashes of many burnt papers. Hewitt passed the shovel carefully under these ashes, lifted them out and placed them gently on the table under the light of the gas-pendant.

      “I must leave you,” said Plummer. “There’ll be an inspector here from the station in a moment—he won’t interfere with you, and if