CHAPTER IV.

YET ANOTHER PROBLEM

Marks of several finger-prints were found upon the front door, while a quantity of tinder found in the fireplace was carefully collected for subsequent examination.

Expert detectives that they were, they went to work quietly and methodically, Medland taking charge of the inquiry and directing operations.

The body of the unfortunate Goodrick was conveyed upstairs to the narrow back bedroom and laid upon the bed covered with a sheet, a grim object in the cold grey dawn.

The room, though clean, was of meagre dimensions, the walls adorned with prints cut from the illustrated papers, while on the mantelshelf was a collection of valuable bronzes, some of them exquisite works of art and undeniably “museum pieces.” Over the bed hung a beautiful Madonna of the Tuscan school in a carved frame of tarnished gilt.

Below, the police officers rummaged the littered sitting-room to see if there were any papers which might reveal anything concerning the dead man’s friends.

“I don’t think ’e ’ad many friends,” declared the worthy landlady, as she watched the detectives methodically turning over the old man’s priceless collection of “old rubbish,” as she termed it. “’E never wrote a letter above once or twice all the time we’ve knowed ’im. Sometimes, as I’ve said to my ’usband, I fancy ’e was a-concealing ’imself from ’is relations. ’E never spoke of kith nor kin, and ’e ’ad no great love for strangers either--except the old priest. I once took in a young man lodger, and oh! it annoyed ’im awful. ’E was a funny old sort, I can tell you. When Mr. Mellini came they always talked in Italian.”

“Curious that you didn’t hear any sound, Mrs. Ayres,” Medland remarked.

“We ’eard the door shut, no doubt, but we didn’t know what it wor.”

Wagner and his colleague were busy turning over the miscellaneous pile of antiques of all sorts, from bits of moth-eaten tapestry to fine but tarnished objects in old silver, chalices, cups, reliquaries, and the rest. Coloured prints of value, parchment rolls with big seals attached, old maps, and other documents lay about, while upon antique furniture, moth-eaten and shabby, were piled pictures, china, and bric-à-brac of all descriptions, sufficient to stock a fair-sized shop.

“’E never went out but what ’e brought ’ome somethink for me to clean up and polish,” Mrs. Ayres declared. “’E used to give ridiculous prices for them bits of old cracked china and rusty swords an’ daggers an’ things. Why, ’e’d think nothink of givin’ ten or fifteen pounds for one o’ them old books over there. Sheer madness, I call it!”

The dust raised by the officers was suffocating as they turned out every corner in their hasty search for any of the old man’s secreted correspondence. Medland felt that there must be something there which would throw light upon the dead man’s friends.

Wagner remarked that the old fellow seemed to buy anything, whether complete or not, as he held up the centre of the old Sheffield-plate candelabrum. Then, ignorant that within its fluted column reposed one of Richard Goodrick’s greatest treasures, he cast it aside as rubbish.

Detectives are not usually connoisseurs, yet Medland, who had a few “old things” at his home at Brixton, saw that, whoever the dead man was, he must have been an educated person and in possession of considerable means.

Just after half-past eight there came a sharp ring at the hall door, and a telegraph-boy handed in a reply-paid message addressed to the dead man.

Medland opened it eagerly and found that it had been dispatched from the Charing Cross office at seven-twenty-five, and read:

“Appeal to you most earnestly to reconsider your decision. When and where can you meet me this evening. I do not wish to re-visit Charlwood Street.--Ravenscourt.”

“Why!” cried the inspector, “here is Sir George, who is dead, telegraphing to his dead friend! I must go at once to the telegraph office and see the original of this message. A dead man has asked for a reply from the dead!”

Entering the car again with the chief, he drove rapidly along Victoria Street and Whitehall, and was quickly in conversation with the clerk who had received the mysterious message.

It was, he saw, written in a rapid, educated hand.

“A youth about nineteen handed it in,” said the clerk. “He was a tall, slim, clean-shaven young man in a dark blue suit.”

That was all the information the inspector could gather. Therefore, re-entering the car, he called at the house of mourning in Carlton House Terrace, and showed the original of the telegram to Lady Ravenscourt, who, terribly broken down, was undecided whether it was in her husband’s handwriting.

The only explanation was that Sir George had written the message over-night and had given it to someone to take to the Charing Cross office. The person in question had failed to do so until this morning.

After consultation with the two police officers on duty at the house, the inspector returned to Scotland Yard, where he dropped his chief, and then went to Don Mario’s address in Denbigh Street, only to find that he had left his lodgings about ten days before. Mr. Goodrick had called one morning, and soon afterwards the lodger had paid his bill and left.

Wagner, his face and hands dirty and his clothes covered with the dust of years, was still busy turning over the miscellaneous collection of odds and ends.

“He was a bit of a miser, sir,” exclaimed the detective-sergeant as the inspector entered the room in Charlwood Street. “See this!” And he exhibited an old leather bag filled with sovereigns, which he had found locked in the bottom cupboard of a Sheraton sideboard.

Medland was much puzzled. He could see no connection between the tragedy in society and the one out of it. And yet there was, he felt, some strange and remarkable connection. It seemed as though the assassin, having killed Sir George, had walked boldly and deliberately out of the house, slamming the door after him, and had then gone to Charlwood Street and there committed the second crime.

The police surgeon had, during Medland’s absence, made a further examination of the body upstairs, and now, on his return, descended and, in an eager voice, called the detective aside.

“There’s some great mystery surrounding the deceased,” he said excitedly. “While I was making an examination I discovered a very significant fact--his beard is a false one!”

Medland’s lips became compressed.

“Then he was disguised--eh?”

“No doubt,” declared the doctor. “That beautiful beard, which has been so much admired here in Charlwood Street, was not his own.”

Medland went upstairs and gazed upon the dead white face, now devoid of beard. Then, with the mystery increased by the discovery, he sought Mrs. Ayres, who was in the regions below.

“Lor’ bless yer, sir, we knowed that,” she laughed. “Mr. Goodrick wore a false beard these past six years. ’E was very proud of ’is beard, but one day, when ’e wor reading with a lamp, ’e upset it, an’ all ’is whiskers got singed off. So ’e went to a wig maker’s an’ got a new ’un. ’E didn’t like to be seen without ’is beard, for ’e was very peculiar like. Sometimes ’e’d alter ’is features with paint and things.”

“Then he always wore his false beard?”

“Always, sir. I never saw ’im without it.”

The woman’s husband was a retiring, inoffensive man, and left all the talking to his wife. Dazed and puzzled, he hardly spoke.

Mrs. Ayres declared that she now recollected how her eccentric lodger on the previous evening, when she brought in his tea, seemed very fidgety and nervous.

“’E turned ’is face from me as if ’e wished to avoid me. I wonder what ’e ’ad on ’is mind?”

In response to further inquiry the gossiping woman said that he looked white and anxious, with a strange, haunted expression upon his face. But the detectives disregarded her statement as mere imagination.

Medland was a very experienced officer who had successfully conducted many very intricate cases; but none, he admitted within himself, had been so full of curious features as the present.

He noted many small points which his assistant had overlooked.

But what was the motive? Why should Sir George, feeling himself dying, seek to remove all traces of his secret visit to Charlwood Street? The affair was a complete enigma, and the only chance of a solution lay in keeping the actual facts out of the papers.

Already most of the London journals contained a brief paragraph recording the sudden death of Sir George Ravenscourt and hinting at suicide; but of the death of the obscure recluse in Pimlico there was no mention.

Throughout the day many inquiries were set afoot by Scotland Yard. At noon a council of the heads of the various branches of the Criminal Investigation Department had been held, as is usual in important cases, when all the known facts were thoroughly discussed and dissected. Then the whole machinery of the higher branch of the Metropolitan Police was set in motion, and the most searching investigation was being made into the recent movements and correspondence of the Baronet.

At Carlton House Terrace the big house with the wide portico and drawn blinds was plunged into mourning. Poor Lady Ravenscourt remained inconsolable, while Maidee sat with her hour after hour, weeping in sympathy.

Telegrams of condolence were showered upon the widow in hundreds, and there was a constant stream of callers.

Towards eight o’clock, tired out with crying, her ladyship lay down and slept upon the sofa in her pretty boudoir upstairs, whereupon Maidee rose and, leaving her on tiptoe, went to her own room, where she hastily put on a black walking-frock and a hat with a black fall.

As she stood before her big mirror, removing the traces of tears from her eyes, she presented a handsome picture. Hair black as raven’s wing, dressed low, formed a frame to a pensive face full of energy and expression. Her large eyes were dark and penetrating; her eyebrows, strongly marked and almost straight, would perhaps have imparted too decided a character to her young head if a charming expression of candour and _naïveté_ had not given her the countenance of a child rather than that of a woman.

Maidee was just twenty, sweet-faced, graceful, charming, and accomplished. A splendid linguist, speaking Italian, German, and French with fluency, she sang sweetly, played tennis well, was a good partner at bridge, and was highly popular in the smart political set in which Lady Ravenscourt moved.

She glanced at the little silver clock upon her dressing-table and saw that it was already half-past eight.

“I must not be late,” she murmured aloud, “or he will think I’m detained, and will not wait.”

Hurriedly she tied her veil, and, drawing on a pair of black gloves, put on her long fur coat, and descended the stairs.

“I shan’t be very long, Burgess,” she said as she passed him. “Lady Ravenscourt is sleeping just now.”

“Very well, miss,” replied the stout butler, as he let her out and watched her turn the corner in the darkness by the statue towards the Athenæum Club.

Believing that she had gone upon some errand for her ladyship, it did not strike him at all curious that she should walk out at that hour. Yet, had he followed her, his curiosity would certainly have been aroused.

She was aware, of course, that some man named Goodrick, whom her uncle had visited a few hours before his death, had also been found dead, but no details of the curious affair had been told the ladies by the police, while the evening papers were still silent upon the subject.

She crossed Waterloo Place and ascended Regent Street as far as Piccadilly Circus, where she hailed a passing taxi, and, giving the man an address, entered the conveyance.

The cab, turning back, crossed Trafalgar Square, and quickly sped along Whitehall, crossed Westminster Bridge, continuing to the Elephant and Castle, and afterwards proceeded along the populous Walworth Road until, suddenly, it turned into a short, quiet, obscure thoroughfare known as Wansey Street. Here all the grimy eight-roomed houses were uniform, with basements, and each with eight front-door steps.

Before one of these, a decidedly dark and dismal abode, the girl alighted, and, ascending the steps, hurriedly rang the bell. Her arrival was evidently expected. A pale-faced lad, whom she greeted as “Harry,” admitted her, and, passing in, she pushed open the door of the shabby sitting-room on the right, where a man rose slowly, his thin white hand outstretched in greeting as he cried:

“Ah, Maidee! Why, you are late--oh! so late. I really feared that you were prevented from coming. And I wanted to see you--very particularly to-night--very particularly indeed.”

“You know the terrible affair that has happened, Uncle John?” exclaimed the girl breathlessly. “How----”

“I know! I know! Poor Sir George!” interrupted the man in a low, husky voice.

And as he held her hand the light of the gas-jet falling full upon his face revealed him to be a thin, fragile-looking old gentleman, with a white beard and dark, penetrating eyes--an old man, wearing a faded, old, dark blue dressing-gown--the exact counterpart of the mysterious Richard Goodrick, the eccentric collector now lying dead in that narrow room in a back street in Pimlico.

“Sit down, Maidee,” he said in a low, intense voice, closing the door and locking it carefully behind her. “Sit down,” and he drew a chair to the fire. “I must have a very serious talk with you, my dear child. I--I want to tell you something--_something very strange_.”