The White Lie. William Le Queux
these words those present in court held their breath.
“Have you taken any action in regard to those footmarks?”
“I have not, sir. But the detectives from Norwich have,” answered the officer.
“Could you see the track of deceased’s motor-cycle?”
“Quite plainly. The deceased apparently dismounted close to the spot where the first trace of blood appeared, for there were marks of a struggle. The gentleman must have been struck down and promptly flung into the ditch, after which his assailant mounted the cycle and rode off.”
“Towards Norwich?”
“Yes, sir—in that direction.”
The grey-faced man at the back of the room was now all attention. Upon his countenance was a curious, intense look. The coroner noticed him, and became puzzled, even suspicious. Nobody knew the man or why he was present. Yet to him the death of Richard Harborne was, without a doubt, of the very greatest concern.
More than once the coroner looked suddenly up from writing the depositions, regarding him with covert glances. Though he had all the appearance of a gentleman, yet there was about him a strange, almost imperceptible air of the adventurer. A close observer would have noticed that his clothes bore the cut of a foreign tailor—French or Italian—and his boots were too long and pointed to be English. His well-kept, white hands were the hands of a foreigner, long and pointed, with nails trimmed to points, and upon his left wrist, concealed by his round shirt-cuff secured by solitaires in place of links, he wore a gold bangle which inside bore an inscription.
At times his grey, hard face was impassive and sphinx-like, yet to the narrative of how Richard Harborne was discovered he listened with a rapt attention it was impossible to conceal.
Yes, the coroner himself decided that there was an air of mystery surrounding the stranger, and resolved to tell the police at the conclusion of the inquiry.
Superintendent Bennet, in answer to further questions put by the coroner, said:
“At Gordon’s Farm, to which we carried the body, I searched the dead man’s pockets. From the Foreign Office passport I found, I learned the name of the gentleman, and from some letters addressed to him at the King’s Head, at Beccles, I was soon able to ascertain by telephone that he had been stopping there for some little time. Most of the letters were private ones, but two of them were enclosed in double envelopes, and written on plain paper without any address or any signature. They were written in the dots and dashes of the Morse alphabet. A post-office telegraphist has seen them, and says that the letters are a jumble and form no words, therefore they must be secret correspondence in code.”
And he handed the two letters in question to the coroner, who examined them with considerable curiosity, while the stranger at the back of the court folded his arms suddenly and looked entirely unconcerned.
“I also found this,” the superintendent went on, handing a piece of tracing linen to the coroner. “As far as I can make out, it is a tracing of some plan or other. But its actual significance I have been unable to determine.”
The coroner spread it out upon his writing-pad and looked at it with a puzzled expression.
“Anything else?” he inquired.
“Yes, sir; this,” and the officer produced the torn half of a man’s visiting-card.
“This is apparently part of one of the deceased’s own cards,” the coroner remarked, holding it before him, while the court saw that it had been torn across obliquely, leaving a jagged edge.
“He seems to have signed his name across the front of it, too, before it was torn,” he added.
“The piece of card was carefully preserved in the inside pocket of his wallet,” the inspector said. “On the back, sir, you will see it is numbered ‘213 G.’”
The coroner turned it over and saw on the back the number and letter as the police-officer had stated.
“There are three others, almost exactly similar,” the inspector went on, producing them carefully from an envelope. “They are numbered ‘103 F,’ ‘91 I,’ and ‘321 G.’”
“Curious,” remarked the coroner, taking them. “Very curious indeed. They are all signed across, yet only half the card is preserved. They have some secret significance without a doubt.”
He glanced across at the stranger, but the face of the latter betrayed no sign of further interest. Indeed, just at that moment, when the whole court was on the tenterhooks of curiosity he looked as though bored by the entire procedure.
“The deceased carried a Smith-Wesson hammerless revolver fully loaded,” the officer added; “but he was so suddenly attacked, it seems, that he had no time to draw it.”
The detectives from Norwich who had the case in hand were not called to give evidence, for obvious reasons, but Dr. Dennan, of North Walsham, whom the police called, a short, white-haired, business-like little man, stepped forward, was sworn, and deposed that when he saw the body at Gordon’s Farm, deceased had been dead nearly two hours.
“He was struck in the throat by some thin, sharp instrument—a deep wound. The artery was severed, and death must have occurred within a few minutes,” he said. “Probably deceased could not speak. He certainly could not have uttered a cry. The blade of the instrument was, I should judge, only about half an inch wide, extremely keen, and tapered to a fine point. Whoever struck the blow was, I am inclined to think, possessed of some surgical knowledge. With Doctor Taylor, I made a post-mortem yesterday and found everything normal. There were some scratches and abrasions on the hands and face, but those were no doubt due to the deceased having been flung into the brambles.”
Again the grey-faced stranger craned his thin neck, listening to every word as it fell from the doctor’s lips.
And again the coroner noticed him—and wondered.
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