He asked himself whether he should follow Kara’s advice. In any circumstance it was not a pleasant thing to meet a ferocious little man who had threatened his life, and to meet him unarmed was tempting Providence. The whole thing was of course ridiculous, but it was ridiculous that he should have borrowed, and it was ridiculous that the borrowing should have been necessary, and yet he had speculated on the best of advice—it was Kara’s advice.

The connection suddenly occurred to him, and yet Kara had not directly suggested that he should buy Roumanian gold shares, but had merely spoken glowingly of their prospects. He thought a moment, and then walked back slowly into the study, pulled open the drawer of his desk, took out the sinister little Browning, and slipped it into his pocket.

“I shan’t be long, dear,” he said, and kissing the girl he strode out into the darkness.

Kara sat back in the luxurious depths of his car, humming a little tune, as the driver picked his way cautiously over the uncertain road. The rain was still falling, and Kara had to rub the windows free of the mist which had gathered on them to discover where he was. From time to time he looked out as though he expected to see somebody, and then with a little smile he remembered that he had changed his original plan, and that he had fixed the waiting room of Lewes junction as his rendezvous.

Here it was that he found a little man muffled up to the ears in a big top coat, standing before the dying fire. He started as Kara entered and at a signal followed him from the room.

The stranger was obviously not English. His face was sallow and peaked, his cheeks were hollow, and the beard he wore was irregular-almost unkempt.

Kara led the way to the end of the dark platform, before he spoke.

“You have carried out my instructions?” he asked brusquely.

The language he spoke was Arabic, and the other answered him in that language.

“Everything that you have ordered has been done, Effendi,” he said humbly.

“You have a revolver?”

The man nodded and patted his pocket.

“Loaded?”

“Excellency,” asked the other, in surprise, “what is the use of a revolver, if it is not loaded?”

“You understand, you are not to shoot this man,” said Kara. “You are merely to present the pistol. To make sure, you had better unload it now.”

Wonderingly the man obeyed, and clicked back the ejector.

“I will take the cartridges,” said Kara, holding out his hand.

He slipped the little cylinders into his pocket, and after examining the weapon returned it to its owner.

“You will threaten him,” he went on. “Present the revolver straight at his heart. You need do nothing else.”

The man shuffled uneasily.

“I will do as you say, Effendi,” he said. “But—”

“There are no ‘buts,’” replied the other harshly. “You are to carry out my instructions without any question. What will happen then you shall see. I shall be at hand. That I have a reason for this play be assured.”

“But suppose he shoots?” persisted the other uneasily.

“He will not shoot,” said Kara easily. “Besides, his revolver is not loaded. Now you may go. You have a long walk before you. You know the way?”

The man nodded.

“I have been over it before,” he said confidently.

Kara returned to the big limousine which had drawn up some distance from the station. He spoke a word or two to the chauffeur in Greek, and the man touched his hat.

CHAPTER II

Assistant Commissioner of Police T. X. Meredith did not occupy offices in New Scotland Yard. It is the peculiarity of public offices that they are planned with the idea of supplying the margin of space above all requirements and that on their completion they are found wholly inadequate to house the various departments which mysteriously come into progress coincident with the building operations.

“T. X.,” as he was known by the police forces of the world, had a big suite of offices in Whitehall. The house was an old one facing the Board of Trade and the inscription on the ancient door told passers-by that this was the “Public Prosecutor, Special Branch.”

The duties of T. X. were multifarious. People said of him—and like most public gossip, this was probably untrue—that he was the head of the “illegal” department of Scotland Yard. If by chance you lost the keys of your safe, T. X. could supply you (so popular rumour ran) with a burglar who would open that safe in half an hour.

If there dwelt in England a notorious individual against whom the police could collect no scintilla of evidence to justify a prosecution, and if it was necessary for the good of the community that that person should be deported, it was T. X. who arrested the obnoxious person, hustled him into a cab and did not loose his hold upon his victim until he had landed him on the indignant shores of an otherwise friendly power.

It is very certain that when the minister of a tiny power which shall be nameless was suddenly recalled by his government and brought to trial in his native land for putting into circulation spurious bonds, it was somebody from the department which T. X. controlled, who burgled His Excellency’s house, burnt the locks from his safe and secured the necessary incriminating evidence.

I say it is fairly certain and here I am merely voicing the opinion of very knowledgeable people indeed, heads of public departments who speak behind their hands, mysterious under-secretaries of state who discuss things in whispers in the remote corners of their clubrooms and the more frank views of American correspondents who had no hesitation in putting those views into print for the benefit of their readers.

That T. X. had a more legitimate occupation we know, for it was that flippant man whose outrageous comment on the Home Office Administration is popularly supposed to have sent one Home Secretary to his grave, who traced the Deptford murderers through a labyrinth of perjury and who brought to book Sir Julius Waglite though he had covered his trail of defalcation through the balance sheets of thirty-four companies.

On the night of March 3rd, T. X. sat in his inner office interviewing a disconsolate inspector of metropolitan police, named Mansus.

In appearance T. X. conveyed the impression of extreme youth, for his face was almost boyish and it was only when you looked at him closely and saw the little creases about his eyes, the setting of his straight mouth, that you guessed he was on the way to forty. In his early days he had been something of a poet, and had written a slight volume of “Woodland Lyrics,” the mention of which at this later stage was sufficient to make him feel violently unhappy.

In manner he was tactful but persistent, his language was at times marked by a violent extravagance and he had had the distinction of having provoked, by certain correspondence which had seen the light, the comment of a former Home Secretary that “it was unfortunate that Mr. Meredith did not take his position with the seriousness which was expected from a public official.”

His language was, as I say, under great provocation, violent and unusual. He had a trick of using words which never were on land or sea, and illustrating his instruction or his admonition with the quaintest phraseology.

Now he was tilted back in his office chair at an alarming angle, scowling at his distressed subordinate who sat on the edge of a chair at the other side of his desk.

“But, T. X.,” protested the Inspector, “there was nothing to be found.”

It was the outrageous practice of Mr. Meredith to insist upon his associates calling him by his initials, a practice which had earnt disapproval in the highest quarters.

“Nothing is to be found!” he repeated wrathfully. “Curious Mike!”

He sat up with a suddenness which caused the police officer to start back in alarm.

“Listen,” said T. X., grasping an ivory paperknife savagely in his hand and tapping his blotting-pad to emphasize his words, “you’re a pie!”

“I’m a policeman,” said the other patiently.

“A policeman!” exclaimed the exasperated T. X. “You’re worse than a pie, you’re a slud! I’m afraid I shall never make a detective of you,” he shook his head sorrowfully at the smiling Mansus who had been in the police force when T. X. was a small boy at school, “you are neither Wise nor Wily; you combine the innocence of a Baby with the grubbiness of a County Parson—you ought to be in the choir.”

At this outrageous insult Mr. Mansus was silent; what he might have said, or what further provocation he might have received may be never known, for at that moment, the Chief himself walked in.

The Chief of the Police in these days was a grey man, rather tired, with a hawk nose and deep eyes that glared under shaggy eyebrows and he was a terror to all men of his department save to T. X. who respected nothing on earth and very little elsewhere. He nodded curtly to Mansus.

“Well, T. X.,” he said, “what have you discovered about our friend Kara?”

He turned from T. X. to the discomforted inspector.

“Very little,” said T. X. “I’ve had Mansus on the job.”

“And you’ve found nothing, eh?” growled the Chief.

“He has found all that it is possible to find,” said T. X. “We do not perform miracles in this department, Sir George, nor can we pick up the threads of a case at five minutes’ notice.”

Sir George Haley grunted.

“Mansus has done his best,” the other went on easily, “but it is rather absurd to talk about one’s best when you know so little of what you want.”

Sir George dropped heavily into the arm-chair, and stretched out his long thin legs.

“What I want,” he said, looking up at the ceiling and putting his hands together, “is to discover something about one Remington Kara, a wealthy Greek who has taken a house in Cadogan Square, who has no particular position in London society and therefore has no reason for coming here, who openly expresses his detestation of the climate, who has a magnificent estate in some wild place in the Balkans, who is an excellent horseman, a magnificent shot and a passable aviator.”

T. X. nodded to Mansus and with something of gratitude in his eyes the inspector took his leave.

“Now Mansus has departed,” said T. X., sitting himself on the edge of his desk and selecting with great care a cigarette from the case he took from his pocket, “let me know something of the reason for this sudden interest in the great ones of the earth.”

Sir George smiled grimly.

“I have the interest which is the interest of my department,” he said. “That is to say I want to know a great deal about abnormal people. We have had an application from him,” he went on, “which is rather unusual. Apparently he is in fear of his life from some cause or other and wants to know if he can have a private telephone connection between his house and the central office. We told him that he could always get the nearest Police Station on the ‘phone, but that doesn’t satisfy him. He has made bad friends with some gentleman of his own country who sooner or later, he thinks, will cut his throat.”

T. X. nodded.

“All this I know,” he said patiently, “if you will further unfold the secret dossier, Sir George, I am prepared to be thrilled.”

“There is nothing thrilling about it,” growled the older man, rising, “but I remember the Macedonian shooting case in South London and I don’t want a repetition of that sort of thing. If people want to have blood feuds, let them take them outside the metropolitan area.”

“By all means,” said T. X., “let them. Personally, I don’t care where they go. But if that is the extent of your information I can supplement it. He has had extensive alterations made to the house he bought in Cadogan Square; the room in which he lives is practically a safe.”

Sir George raised his eyebrows.

“A safe,” he repeated.

T. X. nodded.

“A safe,” he said; “its walls are burglar proof, floor and roof are reinforced concrete, there is one door which in addition to its ordinary lock is closed by a sort of steel latch which he lets fall when he retires for the night and which he opens himself personally in the morning. The window is unreachable, there are no communicating doors, and altogether the room is planned to stand a siege.”

The Chief Commissioner was interested.

“Any more?” he asked.

“Let me think,” said T. X., looking up at the ceiling. “Yes, the interior of his room is plainly furnished, there is a big fireplace, rather an ornate bed, a steel safe built into the wall and visible from its outer side to the policeman whose beat is in that neighborhood.”

“How do you know all this?” asked the Chief Commissioner.

“Because I’ve been in the room,” said T. X. simply, “having by an underhand trick succeeded in gaining the misplaced confidence of Kara’s housekeeper, who by the way”—he turned round to his desk and scribbled a name on the blotting-pad—“will be discharged to-morrow and must be found a place.”

“Is there any—er—?” began the Chief.

“Funny business?” interrupted T. X., “not a bit. House and man are quite normal save for these eccentricities. He has announced his intention of spending three months of the year in England and nine months abroad. He is very rich, has no relations, and has a passion for power.”

“Then he’ll be hung,” said the Chief, rising.

“I doubt it,” said the other, “people with lots of money seldom get hung. You only get hung for wanting money.”

“Then you’re in some danger, T. X.,” smiled the Chief, “for according to my account you’re always more or less broke.”

“A genial libel,” said T. X., “but talking about people being broke, I saw John Lexman to-day—you know him!”

The Chief Commissioner nodded.

“I’ve an idea he’s rather hit for money. He was in that Roumanian gold swindle, and by his general gloom, which only comes to a man when he’s in love (and he can’t possibly be in love since he’s married) or when he’s in debt, I fear that he is still feeling the effect of that rosy adventure.”

A telephone bell in the corner of the room rang sharply, and T. X. picked up the receiver. He listened intently.

“A trunk call,” he said over his shoulder to the departing commissioner, “it may be something interesting.”

A little pause; then a hoarse voice spoke to him. “Is that you, T. X.?”

“That’s me,” said the Assistant Commissioner, commonly.

“It’s John Lexman speaking.”

“I shouldn’t have recognized your voice,” said T. X., “what is wrong with you, John, can’t you get your plot to went?”

“I want you to come down here at once,” said the voice urgently, and even over the telephone T. X. recognized the distress. “I have shot a man, killed him!”

T. X. gasped.

“Good Lord,” he said, “you are a silly ass!”

CHAPTER III

In the early hours of the morning a tragic little party was assembled in the study at Beston Priory. John Lexman, white and haggard, sat on the sofa with his wife by his side. Immediate authority as represented by a village constable was on duty in the passage outside, whilst T. X. sitting at the table with a writing pad and a pencil was briefly noting the evidence.

The author had sketched the events of the day. He had described his interview with the money-lender the day before and the arrival of the letter.

“You have the letter!” asked T. X.

John Lexman nodded.

“I am glad of that,” said the other with a sigh of relief, “that will save you from a great deal of unpleasantness, my poor old chap. Tell me what happened afterward.”

“I reached the village,” said John Lexman, “and passed through it. There was nobody about, the rain was still falling very heavily and indeed I didn’t meet a single soul all the evening. I reached the place appointed about five minutes before time. It was the corner of Eastbourne Road on the station side and there I found Vassalaro waiting. I was rather ashamed of myself at meeting him at all under these conditions, but I was very keen on his not coming to the house for I was afraid it would upset Grace. What made it all the more ridiculous was this infernal pistol which was in my pocket banging against my side with every step I took as though to nudge me to an understanding of my folly.”

“Where did you meet Vassalaro?” asked T. X.

“He was on the other side of the Eastbourne Road and crossed the road to meet me. At first he was very pleasant though a little agitated but afterward he began to behave in a most extraordinary manner as though he was lashing himself up into a fury which he didn’t feel. I promised him a substantial amount on account, but he grew worse and worse and then, suddenly, before I realised what he was doing, he was brandishing a revolver in my face and uttering the most extraordinary threats. Then it was I remembered Kara’s warning.”

“Kara,” said T. X. quickly.

“A man I know and who was responsible for introducing me to Vassalaro. He is immensely wealthy.”

“I see,” said T. X., “go on.”

“I remembered this warning,” the other proceeded, “and I thought it worth while trying it out to see if it had any effect upon the little man. I pulled the pistol from my pocket and pointed it at him, but that only seemed to make it—and then I pressed the trigger....

“To my horror four shots exploded before I could recover sufficient self-possession to loosen my hold of the butt. He fell without a word. I dropped the revolver and knelt by his side. I could tell he was dangerously wounded, and indeed I knew at that moment that nothing would save him. My pistol had been pointed in the region of his heart....”

He shuddered, dropping his face in his hands, and the girl by his side, encircling his shoulder with a protecting arm, murmured something in his ear. Presently he recovered.

“He wasn’t quite dead. I heard him murmur something but I wasn’t able to distinguish what he said. I went straight to the village and told the constable and had the body removed.”

T. X. rose from the table and walked to the door and opened it.

“Come in, constable,” he said, and when the man made his appearance, “I suppose you were very careful in removing this body, and you took everything which was lying about in the immediate vicinity’?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the man, “I took his hat and his walkingstick, if that’s what you mean.”

“And the revolver!” asked T. X.

The man shook his head.

“There warn’t any revolver, sir, except the pistol which Mr. Lexman had.”

He fumbled in his pocket and pulled it out gingerly, and T. X. took it from him.

“I’ll look after your prisoner; you go down to the village, get any help you can and make a most careful search in the place where this man was killed and bring me the revolver which you will discover. You’ll probably find it in a ditch by the side of the road. I’ll give a sovereign to the man who finds it.”

The constable touched his hat and went out.

“It looks rather a weird case to me,” said T. X., as he came back to the table, “can’t you see the unusual features yourself, Lexman! It isn’t unusual for you to owe money and it isn’t unusual for the usurer to demand the return of that money, but in this case he is asking for it before it was due, and further than that he was demanding it with threats. It is not the practice of the average money lender to go after his clients with a loaded revolver. Another peculiar thing is that if he wished to blackmail you, that is to say, bring you into contempt in the eyes of your friends, why did he choose to meet you in a dark and unfrequented road, and not in your house where the moral pressure would be greatest? Also, why did he write you a threatening letter which would certainly bring him into the grip of the law and would have saved you a great deal of unpleasantness if he had decided upon taking action!”

He tapped his white teeth with the end of his pencil and then suddenly,

“I think I’ll see that letter,” he said.

John Lexman rose from the sofa, crossed to the safe, unlocked it and was unlocking the steel drawer in which he had placed the incriminating document. His hand was on the key when T. X. noticed the look of surprise on his face.

“What is it!” asked the detective suddenly.

“This drawer feels very hot,” said John,—he looked round as though to measure the distance between the safe and the fire.

T. X. laid his hand upon the front of the drawer. It was indeed warm.

“Open it,” said T. X., and Lexman turned the key and pulled the drawer open.

As he did so, the whole contents burst up in a quick blaze of flame. It died down immediately and left only a little coil of smoke that flowed from the safe into the room.

“Don’t touch anything inside,” said T. X. quickly.

He lifted the drawer carefully and placed it under the light. In the bottom was no more than a few crumpled white ashes and a blister of paint where the flame had caught the side.

“I see,” said T. X. slowly.

He saw something more than that handful of ashes, he saw the deadly peril in which his friend was standing. Here was one half of the evidence in Lexman’s favour gone, irredeemably.

“The letter was written on a paper which was specially prepared by a chemical process which disintegrated the moment the paper was exposed to the air. Probably if you delayed putting the letter in the drawer another five minutes, you would have seen it burn before your eyes. As it was, it was smouldering before you had turned the key of the box. The envelope!”

“Kara burnt it,” said Lexman in a low voice, “I remember seeing him take it up from the table and throw it in the fire.”

T. X. nodded.

“There remains the other half of the evidence,” he said grimly, and when an hour later, the village constable returned to report that in spite of his most careful search he had failed to discover the dead man’s revolver, his anticipations were realized.

The next morning John Lexman was lodged in Lewes gaol on a charge of wilful murder.

A telegram brought Mansus from London to Beston Tracey, and T. X. received him in the library.

“I sent for you, Mansus, because I suffer from the illusion that you have more brains than most of the people in my department, and that’s not saying much.”

“I am very grateful to you, sir, for putting me right with Commissioner,” began Mansus, but T. X. stopped him.

“It is the duty of every head of departments,” he said oracularly, “to shield the incompetence of his subordinates. It is only by the adoption of some such method that the decencies of the public life can be observed. Now get down to this.” He gave a sketch of the case from start to finish in as brief a space of time as possible.

“The evidence against Mr. Lexman is very heavy,” he said. “He borrowed money from this man, and on the man’s body were found particulars of the very Promissory Note which Lexman signed. Why he should have brought it with him, I cannot say. Anyhow I doubt very much whether Mr. Lexman will get a jury to accept his version. Our only chance is to find the Greek’s revolver—I don’t think there’s any very great chance, but if we are to be successful we must make a search at once.”

Before he went out he had an interview with Grace. The dark shadows under her eyes told of a sleepless night. She was unusually pale and surprisingly calm.

“I think there are one or two things I ought to tell you,” she said, as she led the way into the drawing room, closing the door behind him.

“And they concern Mr. Kara, I think,” said T. X.

She looked at him startled.

“How did you know that?”

“I know nothing.”

He hesitated on the brink of a flippant claim of omniscience, but realizing in time the agony she must be suffering he checked his natural desire.

“I really know nothing,” he continued, “but I guess a lot,” and that was as near to the truth as you might expect T. X. to reach on the spur of the moment.

She began without preliminary.

“In the first place I must tell you that Mr. Kara once asked me to marry him, and for reasons which I will give you, I am dreadfully afraid of him.”

She described without reserve the meeting at Salonika and Kara’s extravagant rage and told of the attempt which had been made upon her.

“Does John know this?” asked T. X.

She shook her head sadly.

“I wish I had told him now,” she said. “Oh, how I wish I had!” She wrung her hands in an ecstasy of sorrow and remorse.

T. X. looked at her sympathetically. Then he asked, “Did Mr. Kara ever discuss your husband’s financial position with you!”

“Never.”

“How did John Lexman happen to meet Vassalaro!”

“I can tell you that,” she answered, “the first time we met Mr. Kara in England was when we were staying at Babbacombe on a summer holiday—which was really a prolongation of our honeymoon. Mr. Kara came to stay at the same hotel. I think Mr. Vassalaro must have been there before; at any rate they knew one another and after Kara’s introduction to my husband the rest was easy.

“Can I do anything for John!” she asked piteously.

T. X. shook his head.

“So far as your story is concerned, I don’t think you will advantage him by telling it,” he said. “There is nothing whatever to connect Kara with this business and you would only give your husband a great deal of pain. I’ll do the best I can.”

He held out his hand and she grasped it and somehow at that moment there came to T. X. Meredith a new courage, a new faith and a greater determination than ever to solve this troublesome mystery.

He found Mansus waiting for him in a car outside and in a few minutes they were at the scene of the tragedy. A curious little knot of spectators had gathered, looking with morbid interest at the place where the body had been found. There was a local policeman on duty and to him was deputed the ungracious task of warning his fellow villagers to keep their distance. The ground had already been searched very carefully. The two roads crossed almost at right angles and at the corner of the cross thus formed, the hedges were broken, admitting to a field which had evidently been used as a pasture by an adjoining dairy farm. Some rough attempt had been made to close the gap with barbed wire, but it was possible to step over the drooping strands with little or no difficulty. It was to this gap that T. X. devoted his principal attention. All the fields had been carefully examined without result, the four drains which were merely the connecting pipes between ditches at the sides of the crossroads had been swept out and only the broken hedge and its tangle of bushes behind offered any prospect of the new search being rewarded.

“Hullo!” said Mansus, suddenly, and stooping down he picked up something from the ground.

T. X. took it in his hand.

It was unmistakably a revolver cartridge. He marked the spot where it had been found by jamming his walking stick into the ground and continued his search, but without success.

“I am afraid we shall find nothing more here,” said T. X., after half an hour’s further search. He stood with his chin in his hand, a frown on his face.

“Mansus,” he said, “suppose there were three people here, Lexman, the money lender and a third witness. And suppose this third person for some reason unknown was interested in what took place between the two men and he wanted to watch unobserved. Isn’t it likely that if he, as I think, instigated the meeting, he would have chosen this place because this particular hedge gave him a chance of seeing without being seen?”

Mansus thought.

“He could have seen just as well from either of the other hedges, with less chance of detection,” he said, after a long pause.

T. X. grinned.

“You have the makings of a brain,” he said admiringly. “I agree with you. Always remember that, Mansus. That there was one occasion in your life when T. X. Meredith and you thought alike.”

Mansus smiled a little feebly.

“Of course from the point of view of the observer this was the worst place possible, so whoever came here, if they did come here, dropping revolver bullets about, must have chosen the spot because it was get-at-able from another direction. Obviously he couldn’t come down the road and climb in without attracting the attention of the Greek who was waiting for Mr. Lexman. We may suppose there is a gate farther along the road, we may suppose that he entered that gate, came along the field by the side of the hedge and that somewhere between here and the gate, he threw away his cigar.”

“His cigar!” said Mansus in surprise.

“His cigar,” repeated T. X., “if he was alone, he would keep his cigar alight until the very last moment.”

“He might have thrown it into the road,” said Mansus.

“Don’t jibber,” said T. X., and led the way along the hedge. From where they stood they could see the gate which led on to the road about a hundred yards further on. Within a dozen yards of that gate, T. X. found what he had been searching for, a half-smoked cigar. It was sodden with rain and he picked it up tenderly.

“A good cigar, if I am any judge,” he said, “cut with a penknife, and smoked through a holder.”

They reached the gate and passed through. Here they were on the road again and this they followed until they reached another cross road that to the left inclining southward to the new Eastbourne Road and that to the westward looking back to the Lewes-Eastbourne railway. The rain had obliterated much that T. X. was looking for, but presently he found a faint indication of a car wheel.

“This is where she turned and backed,” he said, and walked slowly to the road on the left, “and this is where she stood. There is the grease from her engine.”

He stooped down and moved forward in the attitude of a Russian dancer, “And here are the wax matches which the chauffeur struck,” he counted, “one, two, three, four, five, six, allow three for each cigarette on a boisterous night like last night, that makes three cigarettes. Here is a cigarette end, Mansus, Gold Flake brand,” he said, as he examined it carefully, “and a Gold Flake brand smokes for twelve minutes in normal weather, but about eight minutes in gusty weather. A car was here for about twenty-four minutes—what do you think of that, Mansus?”

“A good bit of reasoning, T. X.,” said the other calmly, “if it happens to be the car you’re looking for.”