The Sign of Silence Part 6

"When you know, we shall be better able to judge the matter and to form some theory," Phrida said, crossing the room and re-arranging the big bowl of daffodils in the window.

I remained about an hour, and then, amazed at the calmness of my well-beloved, I returned to my rooms.

In impatience I waited till a quarter past five, when Haines ushered in a tall, well-dressed, clean-shaven man, wearing a dark grey overcoat and white slip beneath his waistcoat, and who introduced himself as Inspector Charles Edwards.

"I've called, Mr. Royle, in order to make some further inquiries regarding this person you have known as Sir Digby Kemsley," he said when he had seated himself. "A very curious affair happened last night. I've been down to Harrington Gardens, and have had a look around there myself.

Many features of the affair are unique."

"Yes," I agreed. "It is curious--very curious."

"I have a copy of your statement regarding your visit to the house during the night," said the official, who was one of the Council of Seven at the Yard, looking up at me suddenly from the cigarette he was about to light.

"Have you any suspicion who killed the young lady?"

"How can I have--except that my friend----"

"Is missing--eh?"

"Exactly."

"But now, tell me all about this friend whom you knew as Sir Digby Kemsley. How did you first become acquainted with him?"

"I met him on a steamer on the Lake of Garda this last summer," was my reply. "I was staying at Riva, the little town at the north end of the lake, over the Austrian frontier, and one day took the steamer down to Gardone, in Italy. We sat next each other at lunch on board, and, owing to a chance conversation, became friends."

"What did he tell you?"

"Well, only that he was travelling for his health. He mentioned that he had been a great deal in South America, and was then over in Europe for a holiday. Indeed, on the first day we met, he did not even mention his name, and I quite forgot to ask for it. In travelling one meets so many people who are only of brief pa.s.sing interest. It was not until a week later, when I found him staying in the same hotel as myself, the Cavour, in Milan, I learnt from the hall-porter that he was Sir Digby Kemsley, the great engineer. We travelled to Florence together, and stayed at the Baglioni, but one morning when I came down I found a hurried note awaiting me. From the hall-porter I learned that a gentleman had arrived in the middle of the night, and Sir Digby, after an excited controversy, left with him for London. In the note he gave me his address in Harrington Gardens, and asked me not to fail to call on my return to town."

"Curious to have a visitor in the middle of the night," remarked the detective reflectively.

"I thought so at the time, but, knowing him to be a man of wide business interests, concluded that it was someone who had brought him an urgent message," I replied. "Well, the rest is quickly told. On my return home I sought him out, with the result that we became great friends."

"You had no suspicion that he was an impostor?"

"None whatever. He seemed well known in London," I replied. "Besides, if he was not the real Sir Digby, how is it possible that he could have so completely deceived his friends! Why, he has visited the offices of Colliers, the great railway contractors in Westminster--the firm who constructed the railway in Peru. I recollect calling there with him in a taxi one day."

Edwards smiled.

"He probably did that to impress you, sir," he replied. "They may have known him as somebody else. Or he simply went in and made an inquiry.

He's evidently a very clever person."

Personally, I could not see how my friend could possibly have posed as Sir Digby Kemsley if he were not, even though Edwards pointed out that the real Sir Digby had only been in London a fortnight for the past nine years.

Still, on viewing the whole situation, I confess inclination towards the belief that my friend was, notwithstanding the allegations, the real Sir Digby.

And yet those strange words of his, spoken in such confidence on the previous night, recurred to me. There was mystery somewhere--a far more obscure mystery even than what was apparent at that moment.

"Tell me what is known concerning Sir Digby's death in Peru," I asked.

"From the report furnished to us at the Yard it seems that one day last August, while the gentleman in question was riding upon a trolley on the Cerro de Pasco railway, the conveyance was accidentally overturned into a river, and he was badly injured in the spine. A friend of his, a somewhat mysterious Englishman named Cane, brought him down to the hospital at Lima, and after two months there, he becoming convalescent, was conveyed for fresh air to Huacho, on the sea. Here he lived with Cane in a small bungalow in a somewhat retired spot, until on one night in February last year something occurred--but exactly what, n.o.body is able to tell. Sir Digby was found by his Peruvian servant dead from snake-bite. Cane evinced the greatest distress and horror until, of a sudden, a second man-servant declared that he had heard his master cry out in terror as he lay helpless in his bed. He heard him shriek: 'You--you blackguard, Cane--take the thing away! Ah! G.o.d! You've--you've killed me!' Cane denied it, and proved that he was at a friend's house playing cards at the hour when the servant heard his master shout for help. Next day, however, he disappeared. Our Consul in Lima took up the matter, and in due course a full report of the affair was forwarded to the Yard, together with a very detailed description of the man wanted. This we sent around the world, but up to to-day without result."

"Then the man Cane was apparently responsible for the death of the invalid," I remarked.

"I think so--without a doubt."

"But who was the invalid? Was he the real Sir Digby?"

"Aye, that's the question," said Edwards, thrusting his hands into his trouser pockets. For some moments we both sat staring blankly into the fire.

"Among the papers sent to us," he said very slowly at last, "was this.

Read it, and tell me your opinion."

And then he took from his pocket-book and handed me a half-sheet of thin foreign notepaper, which had been closely written upon on both sides. It was apparently a sheet from a letter, for there was no beginning and no ending.

The handwriting was educated, though small and crabbed, and the ink brown and half-faded, perhaps because of its exposure to a tropical climate. It had been written by a man, without a doubt.

"That," said Edwards, "was found in a pocket-book belonging to Cane, which, in his hasty flight, he apparently forgot. According to our report the wallet was found concealed beneath the mattress of his bed, as though he feared lest anyone should read and learn what it contained. Read it, and tell me what you think."

I took the sheet of thin paper in my fingers, and, crossing the room to a brighter light, managed to decipher the writing as follows:

"... At fourteen paces from where this wall rises from the lawn stands the ever-plas.h.i.+ng fountain. The basin is circular, while around runs a paved path, hemmed in by smoke-blackened laurels and cut off from the public way by iron railings. The water falls with pleasant cadence into a small basin set upon a base of moss-grown rockwork. Looking south one meets a vista of green gra.s.s, of never-ceasing London traffic, and one tall distant factory chimney away in the grey haze, while around the fountain are four stunted trees. On the right stretches a strip of garden, in spring green and gay with bulbs which bloom and die unnoticed by the hundreds upon hundreds of London's workers who pa.s.s and re-pa.s.s daily in their mad, reckless hurry to earn the wherewithal to live.

"Halt upon the gravel at that spot on the twenty-third of the month punctually at noon, and she will pa.s.s wearing the yellow flower. It is the only trysting-place. She has kept it religiously for one whole year without--alas!--effecting a meeting. Go there--tell her that I still live, shake her hand in greeting and a.s.sure her that I will come there as soon as ever I am given strength so to do.

"I have been at that spot once only, yet every detail of its appearance is impressed indelibly upon my memory. Alas! that I do not know its name. Search and you will a.s.suredly find it--and you will see her. You will speak, and give her courage."

I bit my lip.

A sudden thought illuminated my mind.

The yellow flower!

Was not the mysterious woman whom I was to meet on the night of the fourteenth also to wear a yellow flower--the mimosa!

CHAPTER IV.

"DEAR OLD DIG."

I told Edwards nothing of Sir Digby's curious request, of his strange confidences, or of the mysterious letter to "E. P. K.", which now reposed in a locked drawer in my writing-table.

My friend, be he impostor or not, had always treated me strictly honourably and well. Therefore, I did not intend to betray him, although he might be a fugitive hunted by the police.

Yet was he a fugitive? Did not his words to me and his marvellous disguise prior to the tragedy imply an intention to disappear?

The enigma was indeed beyond solution.