The Sign of Silence. Le Queux William
the dozen respectable householders, "and ask you to be present again this day fortnight – at noon."
There was evident dissatisfaction among the jury, as there is always when a coroner's inquest is ever adjourned.
It is certainly the reverse of pleasant to be compelled to keep an appointment which may mean considerable out-of-pocket expense and much personal inconvenience.
One juror, indeed, raised an objection, as he had to go to do business in Scotland. Whereupon the coroner, as he rose, expressed his regret but declared himself unable to assist him. It was, he remarked, his duty as a citizen to assist in this inquiry, and to arrive at a verdict.
After that the court rose, and every one broke up into small groups to discuss the strange affair of which the Press were at present in ignorance.
Edwards had crossed the room and was speaking to me. But I heard him not. I was thinking of that triangular-bladed weapon – the "misericordia" of the middle ages – so frequently used for stealthy knife-thrusts.
"Coming?" he asked at last. This aroused me to a sense of my surroundings, and I followed him blindly out into the afternoon shopping bustle of High Street, Kensington.
Outside the Underground Station were the flower-sellers. Some were offering that tribute which the Riviera never fails to send to us Londoners in spring – sprigs of mimosa: the yellow flower which would be worn by the mysterious "E. P. K.," the written message to whom reposed in my writing-table at home.
Personally, I am not a man of mystery, but just an ordinary London business man, differing in no way to thousands of others who are at the head of prosperous commercial concerns. London with all its garish glitter, its moods of dulness and of gaiety, its petrol-smelling streets, its farces of passing life, and its hard and bitter dramas always appealed to me. It was my home, the atmosphere in which I had been born and bred, nay, my very existence. I loved London and was ever true to the city of my birth, even though its climate might be derided, and Paris claimed as the one city in which to find the acme of comfort and enjoyment.
I had not sought mystery – far from it. It had been thrust upon me, and now, as we went along the High Street in Kensington, towards the police-station, I found myself a sudden but important factor in a stern chase – a man-hunt – such as London had seldom known, for Edwards was saying to me:
"At all hazards we must find your friend Kemsley, and you, Mr. Royle, must help us. You know him, and can identify him. There are grave suspicions against him, and these must be cleared up in view of the mysterious tragedy in Harrington Gardens."
"You surely don't expect me to denounce my friend!" I cried.
"It is not a question of denouncing him. His own actions have rendered the truth patent to every one. The girl was brutally killed, and he disappeared. Therefore he must be found," Edwards said.
"But who was it who telephoned to me, do you think?" I asked.
"Himself, perhaps. He was full of inventiveness, and he may have adopted that course hoping, when the time came, to prove an alibi. Who knows?" asked the famous inspector.
"Look here!" I said as we crossed the threshold of the police-station, "I don't believe Sir Digby was either an impostor or an assassin."
"Time will prove, Mr. Royle," he laughed with an incredulous air. "A man don't take all these precautions before disappearing unless he has a deeper motive. Your friend evidently knew of the lady's impending visit. Indeed, how could she have entered the flat had he not admitted her?"
"She might have had a key," I hazarded.
"Might – but not very likely," he said. "No, my firm conviction is that the man you know as Sir Digby Kemsley struck the fatal blow, and took the knife away with him."
I shrugged my shoulders, but did not reply.
Inside the station, we passed into the long room devoted to the officers of the Criminal Investigation Department attached to the division, and there met two sergeants who had given evidence.
I was shown the photograph of the dead unknown, calm, and even pretty, just as I had seen her lying stretched in Digby's room.
"The medical evidence was curious, Mr. Royle, wasn't it?" Edwards remarked. "That triangular knife ought not to be very difficult to trace. There surely are not many of them about."
"No," I replied faintly, for the recollection of one which I had seen only a few days prior to the tragic occurrence – the one with the arms of the Medici carved upon its hilt, arose vividly before me.
To me, alas! the awful truth was now plain.
My suspicion regarding the culprit had, by the doctor's evidence, become entirely confirmed.
I set my jaws hard in agony of mind. What was a mystery of London was to me no longer a mystery!
CHAPTER VI.
THE PIECE OF CONVICTION
The morning of the tenth of January was one of those of gloom and darkness which are, on occasions, the blots upon London's reputation.
There seemed no fog, only a heavy, threatening cloud of night fell suddenly upon the city, and at three o'clock it might have been midnight. Streets, shops, and offices were lit everywhere, and buses and taxis compelled to light up, while in the atmosphere was a sulphurous odour with a black deposit which caused the eyes to smart and the lungs to irritate.
Londoners know those periods of unpleasant darkness only too well.
I was sitting in my room in Albemarle Street, watching Haines, who was cleaning a piece of old silver I had bought at an auction on the previous day. The collecting of old silver is, I may say, my hobby, and the piece was a very fine old Italian reliquary, about ten inches in height, with the Sicilian mark of the seventeenth century.
Haines, under my tuition, had become an expert and careful cleaner of silver, and I was watching and exhorting him to exercise the greatest care, as the ornamentation was thin, and some of the scrollwork around the top extremely fragile. It had, according to the inscription at its base, contained a bone of a certain saint – a local saint of Palermo it seemed – but the relic had disappeared long ago. Yet the silver case which, for centuries, had stood upon an altar somewhere, was a really exquisite piece of the silversmith's art.
Suddenly the telephone-bell rang, and on answering it I heard Phrida's voice asking —
"I say, Teddy, is that you? Why haven't you been over since Thursday?"
I started, recollecting that I had not been to Cromwell Road since the afternoon of the inquest – three days ago.
"Dear, do forgive me," I craved. "I – I've been so horribly busy. Had to be at the works each day."
"But you might have been over in the evening," she responded in a tone of complaint. "You remember you promised to take me to the St. James's last night, and I expected you."
"Oh, dearest, I'm so sorry," I said. "But I've been awfully worried, you know. Do forgive me!"
"Yes, I know!" she answered. "Well, I'll forgive you if you'll run over now and take me to tea at the Leslies. I've ordered the car for four o'clock. Will that suit you?"
The Leslies! They were snobbish folk with whom I had but little in common. Yet what could I do but agree?
And then my well-beloved rang off.
When I got down to Cromwell Road just before four o'clock, the darkness had not lifted.
My feelings as I passed along the big, old-fashioned hall and up the thickly-carpeted stairs to the drawing-room were mixed ones of doubt, and yet of deep affection.
Ah, I loved Phrida – loved her better than my own life – and yet – ?
Fresh in my memory was the doctor's evidence that the crime in Harrington Gardens had been committed with a thin, triangular knife – a knife such as that I had often seen lying upon the old-fashioned, walnut what-not in the corner of the room I was just about to enter. I had known it lying in the same place for years.
Was it still there?
Purposely,