The Cold Blooded Vengeance: 10 Mystery & Revenge Thrillers in One Volume. E. Phillips Oppenheim

about the murder, or rather the Colonel was talking and they were listening.

      “There is one point,” he remarked, filling his glass and beaming good-humouredly upon his companions, “which seems to have been entirely overlooked. I am referring to the sex of the supposed assassin!”

      Wrayson looked up inquiringly. It was a point which interested him.

      “Nearly all of you have assumed,” the Colonel continued, “that it must have taken a strong man to draw the cord tight enough to have killed that poor fellow without any noticeable struggle. As a matter of fact, a child with that particular knot could have done it. It requires no strength, only delicacy of touch, rapidity and nerve.”

      “A woman, then—” Wrayson began.

      “Bless you, yes! a woman could have done it easily,” the Colonel declared, “only unfortunately there don’t seem to have been any women about. Why, I’ve seen it done in Korea with a turn of the wrist. It’s all knack.”

      Wrayson shuddered slightly. The Colonel’s words had troubled him more than he would have cared to let any one know.

      “Woman or man or child,” Mason remarked, “the person who did it seems to have vanished in some remarkable manner from the face of the earth.”

      “He certainly seems,” the Colonel admitted, “to have covered up his traces with admirable skill. I have read every word of the evidence at the inquest, and I can understand that the police are completely confused.”

      Heneage and Mason exchanged glances of quiet amusement whilst the Colonel helped himself to cheese.

      “Dear old boy,” the latter murmured, “he’s off on his hobby. Let him go on! He enjoys it more than anything in the world.”

      Heneage nodded assent, and the Colonel returned to the subject with avidity a few moments later.

      “This man Morris Barnes,” he affirmed, “seems to have been a somewhat despicable, at any rate, a by no means desirable individual. He was of Jewish origin, and he had not long returned from South Africa, where Heaven knows what his occupation was. The money of which he was undoubtedly possessed he seems to have spent, or at any rate some part of it, in aping the life of a dissipated man about town. He was known to the fair promenaders of the Empire and Alhambra, he was an habitué of the places where these—er—ladies partake of supper after the exertions of the evening. Of home life or respectable friends he seems to have had none.”

      “This,” Mason declared, leaning back and lighting a cigarette, “is better than the newspapers. Go on, Colonel! Your biography may not be sympathetic, but it is lifelike!”

      The Colonel’s eyes were full of a distinct and vivid light. He scarcely heard the interruption. He was on fire with his subject.

      “You see,” he continued, “that the man’s days were spent amongst a class where the passions run loose, where restraint is an unknown virtue, where self and sensuality are the upraised gods. One can easily imagine that from amongst such a slough might spring at any time the weed of tragedy. In other words, this man Morris Barnes moved amongst a class of people to whom murder, if it could be safely accomplished, would be little more than an incident.”

      The Colonel lit a cigar and leaned back in his chair. He was enjoying himself immensely.

      “The curious part of the affair is, though,” he continued deliberately, “that this murder, as I suppose we must call it, bears none of the hall-marks of rude passion. On the contrary, it suggests in more ways than one the touch of the finished artist. The man’s whole evening has been traced without the slightest difficulty. He dined at the Café Royal alone, promenaded afterwards at the Alhambra, and drove on about supper-time to the Continental. He left there at 12.30 with a couple of ladies whom he appeared to know fairly well, called at their flat for a drink, and sent one out to his cabby—rather unusual forethought for such a bounder. When he reappeared and directed the man to drive him to Cavendish Mansions, Battersea, the driver tried to excuse himself. Both he and his horse were dead tired, he said. Barnes, however, insisted upon keeping him, and off they went. At Cavendish Mansions, Barnes alighted and offered the man a sovereign. Naturally enough the fellow could not change it, and Barnes went in to get some silver from his rooms, promising to return in a minute or two. The cabby descended and walked to the corner of the street to see if he could beg a match for his pipe from any passer-by. He may have been away for perhaps five minutes, certainly no more, during which time he stood with his back to the Mansions. Seeing no one about, he returned to his cab, ascended to his seat, naturally without looking inside, and fell fast asleep. The next thing he remembers is being awakened by Wrayson here! So much for the cabby.”

      “What a fine criminal judge was lost to the country, Colonel, when you chose the army for a career,” Mason remarked, turning round to order some coffee. “Such coherence—such an eye for detail. Pass the matches, Wrayson. Thanks, old chap!”

      The Colonel smiled placidly.

      “I am afraid,” he said, “that I should never have had the heart to sentence anybody to anything, but I must admit that things of this sort do interest me. I love to weigh them up and theorize. The more melodramatic they are the better.”

      Heneage helped himself to a cigarette from Mason’s case, and leaned back in his chair.

      “I never have the patience,” he remarked, “to read about these things in the newspapers, but the Colonel’s résumé is always thrilling. Do go on. There won’t be any pool till four o’clock.”

      The Colonel smiled good-naturedly.

      “It’s good of you fellows to listen to my prosing,” he remarked. “No use denying that it is a sort of hobby of mine. You all know it. Well, we’ll say we’ve finished with the cabby, then. Enter upon the scene, of all people in the world, our friend Wrayson!”

      “Hear, hear!” murmured Mason.

      Wrayson changed his position slightly. With his head resting upon his hand, he seemed to be engaged in tracing patterns upon the tablecloth.

      “Wrayson knows nothing of Barnes beyond the fact that they are neighbours in the same flats. Being the assistant editor of a journal of world-wide fame, however, he has naturally a telephone in his flat. By means of that instrument he receives a message in the middle of the night from an unknown person in an unknown place, which he is begged to convey to Barnes. The message is in itself mysterious. Taken in conjunction with what happened to Barnes, it is deeply interesting. Barnes, it seems, is to go immediately on his arrival, at whatever hour, to the Hotel Francis. Presumably he would know from whom the message came, and the sender does not seem to have doubted that if it was conveyed to Barnes he would obey the summons. Wrayson agrees to and does deliver it. That is to say, he writes it down and leaves it in the letter-box of Barnes door, Barnes not having yet returned. Now we begin to get mysterious. That communication from our friend here has not been discovered. It was not in the letter-box; it was not upon the person of the dead man. We cannot tell whether or not he ever received it. I believe that I am right so far?”

      “Absolutely,” Wrayson admitted.

      “Our friend Wrayson, then,” the Colonel continued, beaming upon his neighbour, “instead of going to bed like a sensible man, takes up a book and falls asleep in his easy-chair. He wakes up about three or four o’clock, and his attention is then attracted by the jingling of a hansom bell below. He looks out of window and sees a cab, both the driver and the occupant of which appear to be asleep. The circumstance striking him as somewhat unusual, he descends to the street and finds—well, rather more than he expected. He finds the cabman asleep, and his fare scientifically and effectually throttled by a piece of silken cord.”

      Wrayson turned to the waiter and ordered a liqueur brandy.

      “Have one, you fellows?” he asked. “Good! Four, waiter.”

      He tossed his own off directly it arrived. His lips were pale, and the hand which raised the glass to his lips shook. Heneage alone, who was watching him through