An Eye for an Eye Part 7

"No," Patterson declared in the low, hoa.r.s.e voice of one filled with fear. "There is no mistake. When we first entered there was another woman here, younger, prettier, with light hair and blue eyes. This is the most unaccountable, most amazing and most inexplicable of all our discoveries."

CHAPTER FIVE.

THE SECOND WOMAN.

The statement that the woman found by Patterson on his first entry there, and seen by me afterwards, had disappeared, was at first discredited by our companions. It seemed too astounding to be the truth, nevertheless there was now reclining in the same armchair a woman who certainly bore no resemblance whatever to the beautiful, fair-haired girl with eyes of such deep, pure blue--those eyes that had stared at me so horribly in the ghastly rigidity of death. I recollected that smile upon her lips, half of sarcasm, half of pleasure; that strange expression which had held me entranced yet horrified.

She had disappeared, and here in her place was a dark-complexioned woman, older, nevertheless handsome--a woman in whose refined face was an air of romance and tragedy, and upon whose hand was the marriage bond. She, too, was dead. The doctor had examined her and p.r.o.nounced life extinct.

"How could this have occurred?" I exclaimed, turning to Patterson as soon as I had recovered from the shock of the astounding discovery.

"It's simply amazing!" he declared. "I'm utterly at a loss to account for it. The woman we found here was most distinctly another person."

"Then there has been a triple tragedy," observed Boyd. "The body of the first woman must have been conveyed away during the time you were absent at the police-station."

"But why?" I asked. "What on earth could be the motive?"

"Impossible to tell," Patterson answered. "Perhaps the body is hidden somewhere in the house."

"No," Boyd replied. "We've made a complete search everywhere. It has undoubtedly been taken away. This fact, in itself, shows first, that there is more than one person implicated in the crime, and secondly, that they were absolutely fearless; while further, the incident of the telephone is in itself sufficient proof that they had taken the utmost precautions against detection."

"Are you quite certain that every cupboard and wardrobe has been looked into?" I asked doubtfully.

"Quite. From garret to cellar we've thoroughly overhauled the place.

There are a couple of large trunks in one of the bedrooms, but we examined the contents of both. They contain books."

"But loose boards, or places of that sort?" I suggested.

"When we search a place," responded the Scotland Yard inspector with a smile, "we're always on the look-out for places of concealment. I've superintended the investigation myself, and I vouch that nothing is concealed within this house."

"Do you think that the a.s.sa.s.sin was actually in the house when we first entered?"

"That's more than likely," he answered with a pensive air. "Evidently the instant you'd gone the body of the fair-haired girl was somehow spirited away."

"Where?"

"Ah, that's what we must find out. Perhaps a taxi-driver will be able to throw a light upon the matter."

"This is certainly a first-cla.s.s mystery," observed d.i.c.k, with journalistic instinct and a keen eye to those "special interviews" and "latest revelations" in which readers of his journal always revelled.

"It will make no end of a stir. What a G.o.dsend, now that the gooseberry season is coming on."

A good murder mystery is always welcome to a certain cla.s.s of London daily journals, but more especially in the season when Parliament is "up," the Courts are closed for the Vacation, and the well of sensations runs low. This season is termed, in journalistic parlance, "the gooseberry season," on account of the annual appearance of the big gooseberry, that mythical monster of our youth, the sea-serpent, and the starting of the usual silly correspondence upon "Why should we live?" or some equally interesting controversial subject.

We were all held in blank astonishment at this latest development of the extraordinary affair. It had so many remarkable phases that, even to Boyd, one of the shrewdest officers of the Criminal Investigation Department, it was bewildering.

To me, however, the disappearance of that dead woman with the fair, pure face was the strangest of all that tangle of astounding facts. That face had impressed me. Its every feature had been riveted indelibly upon my memory, for it was a face which, in life, I should have fallen down and worshipped as an idol, for there was about it a purity and charm which must have been highly attractive, a vivacity in those eyes which, even in death, had held me spell-bound.

"I don't see that we can do any more just now," Boyd remarked in a business-like tone to his subordinate.

"You've seen the three cards which were beneath the plates on the dining-table?" I asked.

"Yes," he responded. "There's some hidden meaning connected with them, but what it's impossible at present to guess. In order to prosecute our inquiries we must preserve secrecy. Nothing must be published yet.

Indeed, Patterson, you'll apply to the Coroner at once to take steps to withhold the real state of affairs from the public. If the a.s.sa.s.sins find that no hue and cry is aroused we may have a far better chance of tracing them, for they may betray themselves."

"It's a pity," observed d.i.c.k, deeply disappointed. "A first-cla.s.s sensation of this sort don't occur every day. Why, it's worth four columns if a line."

"Be patient," Patterson urged. "You shall have an opportunity of publishing it before long, and I'll see that you are a long way ahead of your contemporaries."

"Don't let the news agencies have a word. They always try and get in front of us," said Cleugh, whose particular antagonists were the Central News and the Press a.s.sociation, which possess facilities for the collection of news and its transmission by wire to the various newspapers that form one of the most marvellous organisations in unknown London.

"Leave it to me," said the inspector. "As soon as it's wise to let the public know anything I'll give you permission to publish. The _Comet_ shall be first in the field with it."

"Very well," answered d.i.c.k, satisfied with Patterson's answer. That officer had been prominent a few years before in the investigations relative to those mysterious a.s.sa.s.sinations of women in Whitechapel, and was very friendly with "the _Comet_ man," as Cleugh was termed in the journal which he represented.

Many were the suggestions we put forth as to how the bodies of the victims could have thus been changed, but no theory we could advance seemed likely to have any foundation in fact.

The mystery was certainly one of the strangest that had ever puzzled the crime investigators of London. The cause of its discovery was a most remarkable incident, and at every turn as the investigation proceeded mystery seemed to follow upon mystery, until the whole affair presented so many curious features that a solution of the problem seemed utterly impossible.

I bent beside the body of the woman who, reclining in the armchair with one arm fallen by her side, presented the appearance of one asleep. Her presence there was a profound enigma. A thought, however, occurred to me at that moment. The dining-table below had been laid for three.

Perhaps she was the third person.

For the greater part of an hour we remained in that house of grim shadows discussing the various phases of the astounding affair, until at last, about eleven, we all left, two constables in uniform being stationed within. So secretly had this search been carried out that the neighbours, though, perhaps, puzzled by Patterson's inquiries, entertained no suspicion of any tragic occurrence. In Kensington Road all the shops facing Upper Phillimore Place were closed save the tobacconist's and the frequent public-houses, the foot pa.s.sengers were few, and at that hour the stream of taxis with homeward-bound theatre-goers had not yet commenced. Market garden carts from Hounslow or Feltham, piled high with vegetables, rumbled slowly past on their journey to Covent Garden, and a few empty motor-buses rattled along towards Hyde Park, but beyond all was quiet, for that great artery of Western London goes early to rest.

At the police-station we took leave of Patterson and Boyd, and entering a motor-bus at Kensington Church, arrived at our chambers shortly before midnight.

"There's something infernally uncanny in the whole business," said the Mystery-monger as we sat smoking, prior to turning in. It was our habit to smoke and gossip for half an hour before going to bed, no matter what the time. Our talk was generally of "shop" events in our world of journalism, the chatter of Fleet Street intermingled with reminiscences of the day's doings. d.i.c.k was sitting in the armchair reflectively sucking his eternal briar, while I sat at my table pondering over a letter I had found there on my return. It was from Mary Blain, for whom I had once long ago entertained a very strong affection, but who had since gone out of my life, leaving only a shadowy recollection of a midsummer madness, of clandestine meetings, of idle, careless days spent in company with a smart, eminently pretty, girl in blue serge skirt, cotton blouse and sailor hat. All was of the past. She had played me false. I was poor, and she had thrown me over for a man richer than myself. For nearly three years I had heard little of her; indeed, I confess that she had almost pa.s.sed from my memory until that evening when I had sat awaiting d.i.c.k, and now on my return I opened that letter to discover it in her well-known, bold hand--the hand of an educated woman.

The letter, which had had some wanderings, as its envelope showed, and was dated from her father's house up the river, merely expressed a hope that I was in good health, and satisfaction at hearing news of me through a mutual friend. Such a letter struck me as rather strange. I could only account for it by the fact that she desired to resume our acquaintanceship, and that this was a woman's diplomatic way of opening negotiations. All women are born diplomatists, and woman's wit and powers of perception are far more acute than man's.

The letter brought back to me vividly the memory of that sweet, merry face beneath the sailor hat, the wealth of dark hair, the laughing eyes so dark and brilliant, the small white hands, and their wrists confined by their golden bangles. Yes, Mary Blain was uncommonly good-looking.

Her face was one in ten thousand. But she was utterly heartless. I recollected how, when with her mother she had spent a summer at Eastbourne, what a sensation her remarkable beauty caused at Sunday parade on the Esplanade. She was lovely without consciousness of it, utterly ingenuous, and as ignorant of the world's wickedness as a child.

The daughter of a wealthy City man who combined company-promoting with wine-importing, she had from childhood been nursed in the lap of luxury, and being the only child, was the idol of her parents. Their country house at Harwell, near Didcot, was in my father's parish, and from the time when her nurse used to bring her to the Rectory until that well-remembered evening when in the leafy by-lane I had for the last time turned my back upon her with a hasty word of denunciation, we had been closest friends. She had played me false. My hopes had been wrecked on Life's strange and trackless sea, and now whenever I thought of her it was only in bitterness. I have more than a suspicion that old Mr. Blain did not approve of our close acquaintanceship, knowing that I was a mere journalist with an almost untaxable income; nevertheless, she had continued to meet me, and many were the happy hours we spent together wandering through that charming country that skirts the upper reaches of the Thames.

In order to see her I used frequently to run down from London to my home on Sat.u.r.days and remain till Mondays. With her mother she sat in her seat in front of the Rectory pew, and as she walked down the aisle her face would be illumined by a glad light of welcome. How restful were those Sundays after the wear and tear of London life! How peaceful the days in that sleepy little village hidden away in a leafy hollow three miles from the Great Western line! After we had parted, however, I did not go home for six months. Then, on inquiry, I found that the Blains had sold their place, presumably because they were in want of money, for it was said that they had taken a smaller house facing the Thames, near Laleham, that village a little beyond Shepperton, where in the churchyard lies Matthew Arnold. From all accounts old Blain had lost heavily in speculation and had been compelled to sell his carriages and horses, dispose of many of his pictures, and even part with some of the Louis Seize furniture at Shenley Court, where they had lived. This was, of course, indicative of a very severe reverse of fortune.

Since those hours of Mary's love and her subsequent falseness, my life had been a queer series of ups and downs, as it must ever be in journalistic London. Many dreary days of changeful care had come and gone since then.

I sat silent, thinking, with her letter still open in my hand.

"Why are you so confoundedly glum, old man?" d.i.c.k asked. "What's your screed about? Duns in the offing?"

"No. It's nothing," I answered evasively, smiling.

"Then don't look so down in the mouth," he urged. "Have a peg, and pull yourself together." He had been in India, and consequently termed a whisky-and-soda a "peg." The origin of that expression is a little abstruse, but is supposed to refer pointedly to the pegs in one's coffin.

I thrust the letter into my pocket, helped myself to a drink, and lit a cigarette.

"It's a really first-cla.s.s sensation," d.i.c.k said, again referring to the curious affair. "Pity I can't publish something of it to-morrow. It's a good thing chucked away."