The Red Room

“I certainly have never seen the gentleman to my knowledge!” declared the other.

“But he must, I think, have received two telegrams.”

“I remember one telegram, but I do not recollect the other. We have so many wires here in the course of the day, you know,” the girl replied. “But what I do recollect is being rung up on the telephone from London on the following day, with an inquiry whether the gentleman was staying here.”

“You don’t know who rang you up?” I asked.

“I haven’t any idea!” she laughed. “It may have been the police. They’ve done so before now.”

“Of course he might have stayed here in another name and taken telegrams addressed to him as Greer,” I suggested.

“I scarcely think so,” replied the elder of the pair, a tall, smart, business-like woman. “If he had, one of us would, no doubt, have remembered him. I’d have a chat to the hall-porter at the station-entrance if I were you,” she added.

I therefore sought out the tall, liveried man she had indicated, and again to him exhibited the portrait.

He remembered the Professor quite distinctly, he told me. The visitor deposited in his charge a kit-bag and suit-case, remarking that he was not quite certain if he would remain the night, and passed on into the hotel. “That was about 7:35 in the morning.”

“When did you see him again?”

“About noon, when he passed through to the lift, and descended into the station. I noticed that he was then wearing a different hat from the one he had on when he arrived from London,” the hall-porter replied.

“When did he take his luggage?”

“About half-past three. A porter took it below, and it was placed in the cloak-room.”

“You didn’t see him again?”

“No, sir. He probably left by a later train that day.”

That was all the information I could gather in that quarter. The remainder of the morning I spent idling about Princes Street, that splendid thoroughfare which has few equals in the world, trying to decide upon my next course of action. I had exhausted Edinburgh, it seemed, and clearly my way lay south again.

Suddenly, on re-entering the hotel to get lunch, a thought occurred to me, and I sought out the hair-dressing department, making inquiry of the man in charge, a fair-haired, well-spoken German.

As soon as I showed him the portrait, he exclaimed:

“Ja! I recollect him – quite well.”

“Tell me what you know of his movements,” I urged.

I saw that the man regarded me with considerable suspicion.

“I presume, sir,” he said, “that you are an agent of police?”

“No, I’m not,” I assured him, rather surprised at his remark. “I’m simply making inquiry because – well, because my friend is now missing.”

“Then I’ll tell you what occurred, sir,” answered the German, with a slight accent. “The gentleman came in about four o’clock and asked me to shave him. When I began to put on the soap I realised, however, that he had himself been cutting off his beard closely. But I shaved him, and made no comment. We hairdressers are used to such things, yet they sometimes cause us a little wonder.”

“Ah!” I cried. “Then he left here with his beard shaven clean! He intended to disguise himself!”

“No doubt, sir,” replied the man, who seemed a particularly intelligent fellow. “Because, earlier in the day, while crossing the corridor, I had noticed him standing near the lift. He then had a full beard. I recollected the clothes he was wearing.”

“Did he talk to you?”

“Very little, sir. He seemed a gloomy, rather silent man.”

That was all he could tell me, though he declared that the gentleman had seemed very agitated and upset while he was being shaved. His hair was also cut, and his moustache trimmed.

“Did it alter his appearance much?” I inquired. “Very greatly, sir. I should scarcely have known him when he left here.”

“And you told nobody?”

“It is not my business to pry into customers’ affairs,” responded the man, and very justly; “but I took good note of his countenance.”

What he told me was certainly remarkable. The whole of the facts were, indeed, astounding.

While the unfortunate Professor lay dead in his laboratory in London he was, at the same time, here, in Edinburgh, making an attempt at disguise, and sending a reassuring telegram to his daughter!

That Professor Greer had been killed there was not the slightest doubt – killed, too, behind locked doors, in circumstances which themselves formed a complete and inscrutable mystery. Then, if so, who was this man who had left London with the Professor’s luggage, had arrived in Edinburgh, and whom the hotel-servants and others had identified by his portrait?

If he were not the Professor, then who could he have been? One thing was certain, he could not have been the actual assassin. Yet if not, why had he taken such pains to disguise his appearance?

The theory of Greer having a double I put aside at once. Doubles only exist in the realms of fiction. Here, however, I was dealing with hard, solid facts.

Each phase of the intricate problem became more and more complicated as I endeavoured to analyse it. That grey, wintry afternoon I wandered about the damp streets of Edinburgh, gazing aimlessly in the shop windows, and afterwards sat for a full hour upon a seat in the deserted public gardens below the Castle, thinking and wondering until the gloomy twilight began to creep on, and the lights along Princes Street commenced to glimmer.

Then, rising, I set off again across the North Bridge, and through High Street and Johnstone Terrace to the Caledonian Station, and by George Street and St. Andrew’s Street back to the Waverley, a tour of the centre of the city. I was merely killing time, for I had decided to take the night express back to King’s Cross.

When I re-entered the hotel it was nearly seven o’clock, and, as I did so, the porter at the revolving door in Princes Street touched his cap and informed me that the hairdresser desired to see me again.

I ascended to the first floor, and entered the saloon, where I found the German with whom before luncheon I had spoken. He was seated alone, reading a newspaper.

“Ach, sir!” he exclaimed; “I thought perhaps you had left! I’m very glad you are still here! A most curious circumstance occurred this afternoon when I went off duty as usual from three till five. I live in Forth Street, at the back of the Theatre Royal, and while walking towards home along Broughton Street, I came face to face with the gentleman for whom you are searching.”

“You’ve seen him!” I gasped, half-inclined to disbelieve the man’s story, for he was evidently on the look-out for a substantial tip.

“Yes, he recognised me, and tried to avert his face. But I managed to get a good look at him, and am absolutely certain that I’m not mistaken. He was dressed differently, and looks many years younger than when I first saw him wearing his beard.”

“Then he is still in hiding here!” I gasped quickly. “Did you follow him?”

“I did. I had to exercise considerable caution, for he evidently fears that he is being traced. His attitude was essentially that of a man dreading recognition. He may be suspicious that you are here, sir.”

“But have you discovered where he is living?” I demanded breathlessly, my heart leaping.

“Yes, sir,” replied the German; “I have.”

Chapter Thirteen

I Learn Something Interesting

Ten minutes later I was with the German hairdresser on a tram-car, going up Regent Road, towards Abbey Hill. On turning into the London Road at the station, we descended, and, crossing the main thoroughfare, entered one of the narrow, ill-lit turnings on the left, the name of which I was unable to see.

“I don’t know whom to ask for,” I remarked to my companion, as we hurried along together.

“I can only point you out the house where your friend is in hiding,” replied the man. “You, of course, know more of his habits than I do.”

In a few moments we passed before a tall, drab, dingy-looking house, which the German pointed out was the false Professor’s secret abode.

I longed for the presence of Kershaw Kirk, for I knew not how to act. I reflected, however, that the reason of my journey to Edinburgh was to clear up the mystery, and this thought prompted me to action.

So while he waited in the semi-darkness at the next corner, I returned to the house and rang the bell. To the door came a rather dishevelled girl of about eighteen, evidently the daughter of the occupier.

“You have a gentleman living here,” I said. “Would you kindly tell him that Mr Kirk desires to see him?”

“The gentleman’s no longer here, sir,” replied the girl, in broad Scotch.

“Gone!” I ejaculated.

“Yes, sir. Mr Martin’s who you mean, I suppose, for he’s the only gentleman mother has had. He packed his things, and left for the station an hour ago.”

My heart fell. He had evidently realised that the German was following him, and had escaped us!

“Can I see your mother?” I asked. Whereupon I was invited into the small narrow hall of the musty-smelling house, and a thin-faced, angular woman in rusty black came forward.

“Pray pardon my troubling you,” I said apologetically, “but I have an urgent message to give to Mr Martin, who, I understand, has been staying with you.” It was an advantage that the girl had unwittingly betrayed the name which the false Professor had adopted.

“Mr Martin’s gone, sir. He left this evening.”

“So your daughter tells me. But haven’t you any idea where he intended going?”

The woman hesitated, and by that slight pause I felt convinced she knew something which she intended keeping to herself.

“No, sir, he left quite suddenly,” was her hurried reply. “He had been out all day, and, returning about five, packed up his things, paid me what he owed me, together with a week’s rent in lieu of notice, and, getting a cab, drove away.”

“To the station – eh?”

“Yes, I heard him tell the man to drive to Princes Street.”

“He hadn’t been very long with you, had he?”

“About a week. He came on the Monday, telling me that he had been recommended by a friend of his, an actor. I let rooms to professionals,” she added, in explanation.

“He is a very reticent man,” I remarked. “I suppose he seldom went out?”

“No; he used to read all day, and go for just half-an-hour’s stroll at night. He struck me as a rather eccentric man.”

“So he is,” I laughed. “I’m an old friend of his, so, of course, I know. I hope he is not in your debt. If so, please tell me and I’ll liquidate it.”

“Oh, not at all, sir. He’s paid for everything,” declared the woman, upon whom my ready offer to pay her lodger’s debts had evidently made an impression. “His sudden departure mystified us.”

“Did he receive many letters?”

“Only two – and a telegram you sent him – which I found dropped by the side of his dressing-table.”

“From me?” I echoed, yet next instant recollecting that I had given my name as Kirk.

“Yes, you telegraphed to him several days ago to meet you at the Caledonian Hotel in Glasgow. You are Mr Kirk, are you not?”

“Ah, of course, I recollect,” I laughed. “Do you think he’s gone to Glasgow?” I asked, as the sudden thought occurred to me.

“Well, sir,” replied the woman, “as you are such an intimate friend of Mr Martin’s, I think I ought to tell you that, before leaving to-night, he asked me in confidence to repeat any telegram that might come for him to the Caledonian in Glasgow, but asking me at the same time to give no information to anyone who might call and make inquiries as to his whereabouts.”

“Then he’s gone to Glasgow to-night!” I exclaimed, with sudden enthusiasm. “If I follow at once, I may find him!”

“I certainly think so, sir,” was the woman’s response, whereupon I made a hurried adieu, and, rejoining the German, into whose palm I slipped a sovereign, was quickly back at the hotel.

I left Princes Street Station at ten minutes to ten that night by the express due in Glasgow at eleven. That hour’s journey was full of excitement, for I was now upon the heels of the false Professor, whose whereabouts and assumed name Kirk knew, and with whom he had made an appointment.

Was this man, known as Martin, about to meet Kirk?

I laughed within myself when I reflected upon the awkward surprise which my presence there would give them. What the lodging-house keeper had told me proved conclusively that Kershaw Kirk had conspired to cause the death of poor Greer, and that the story he had told me was untrue.

Yet, again, there arose in my mind the problem why, if he were the assassin, or an accomplice of the assassin, should he introduce me into that house of death – myself a comparative stranger! Alone I sat in the corner of the railway carriage, thinking it all over, and trying, as I had so continuously tried, to discern light in the darkness.

I had been a fool – a confounded fool, not to inform the police of my suspicions at the outset. The girl Ethelwynn, whom I had seen lying apparently dead, whose chill flesh I had touched, was alive and well at Broadstairs! Was not that, in itself, a staggering mystery, exclusive of that secret visit of Kirk’s to Foley Street, and the woman’s cry in that foggy night?

Was it any wonder, then, that I was neglecting my business, leaving all to Pelham, with whom I had communicated by telegram several times? Was it any wonder that, the circumstances being of so uncanny and intricate a nature, I hesitated to tell Mabel, my wife, lest I should draw her into that web of doubt, uncertainty, and grim tragedy?

I had watched the columns of the Times each day to discover the advertised message promised by Kirk; but there had been none. I now saw how I had been as wax in the hands of that clever, smooth-spoken cosmopolitan. I believed in men’s honesty, a most foolish confidence in these degenerate days, when morality is sneered at, and honesty is declared openly to be “the worst policy.”

Alas! in this dear old England of ours truth and justice are to-day rapidly disappearing. Now that Mammon rules, that divorce is a means of notoriety, and that charity begins abroad with Mansion House funds for undeserving foreigners, while our starving unemployed clamour in their thousands for bread, the old order of things has, alas! changed.

The honest man – though, be it said, there are still honest, sterling men in business and out of it – goes to the wall and is dubbed a fool; while the master-thief, the smug swindler, the sweater, and the promoter of bogus companies may pay his money and obtain his baronetcy, or his seat in the House of Lords, and thus hall-mark himself with respectability.

While money talks, morality is an absent factor in life, and truth is but a travesty. Glance only at the list of subscribers to a Mansion House Fund, the very basis of which is the desire of the Lord Mayor who may happen to be in office to get his baronetcy, while its supporters are in the main part self-advertisers, or donations are given in order to establish an unstable confidence and extend a false credit. Thus, even in our charities, we have become humbugs, because the worship of the Golden Calf has bred cant, hypocrisy, and blatant self-confidence, which must ere long be the cause of our beloved country’s downfall beneath the iron-heel of far-seeing, business-like Germany.

Such reflections as these ran through my mind as that night I sat in the train watching the lights as we neared the great industrial centre on the Clyde. I was trying to peer into the future, but I only saw before me a misty horizon of unutterable despair.

I longed to meet Ethelwynn Greer, and put to her certain questions. Was it not a complete enigma, startling and inscrutable, that she, having seen her beloved father lying lifeless, should utter no word – even to young Langton, to whom she was evidently devoted? That fact was utterly incomprehensible.

At last the train slowed and drew into the great echoing station. On alighting I gave my bag to a porter and entered the big Caledonian Hotel adjoining. I had stayed there on previous occasions, and knew its huge dining-room, its long corridors, and its wide ramifications.

I registered in the name of Lamb, deeming it best to conceal my presence, and while writing in the book, scanned the page for Martin’s name. It was not, however, there. I turned back to earlier arrivals that day, but with no better result. So I ascended in the lift to my room on the second floor.

Of course, it was quite within the bounds of possibility that the false Professor might use yet another name if he wished to avoid being followed from Edinburgh. Besides, I had noticed that just as at the North British at Edinburgh, so here, telegrams were exhibited upon a board, and could be taken. Therefore, if a wire came in the name of Martin, he could quite easily claim it.

After a wash I wandered about the hotel, through the lounge, smoking-room, and the other of the public apartments. Yet how could I recognise a man who was disguised, and whom I had never seen?

I was placed at a disadvantage from the very first by never having met this man who had posed as the dead Professor. Yet with the knowledge that Kirk desired particularly to see him, I felt that there was a probability of their meeting, and that, if only I remained wary and watchful, I should come across, amid the hundreds of persons staying there, the mysterious dweller in Bedford Park.

From my arrival at eleven till half-past one I remained on the alert, but saw no one I knew. Therefore I retired to bed, thoroughly worn-out by that constant vigil. Yet I was in no way disheartened. The false Professor had started from Edinburgh for that destination, and was, I felt confident, staying there under another name. It only lay with me to unmask him, or to wait until the pair met clandestinely, and then to demand to know the truth.

Surely in all the annals of crime there had never been one so surrounded by complex circumstances as the tragedy of Sussex Place, and assuredly, too, no innocent man had been more ingeniously misled than my unfortunate self.

Next day, from eight o’clock in the morning till late at night, I idled about the big hotel, ever anxious and ever watchful. I kept an eye upon each arrival and each departure.

Then I became slowly and against my will, convinced that the false Professor had not come to that hotel, but had put up somewhere else, well knowing that he could obtain the telegraphic message from Kirk whenever he cared to step in and take it from the board.

Again, even though at the heels of the conspirators, was I yet being outwitted – a fact which became the more impressed upon me on the third day of my futile expectancy.

Hourly I watched that telegraph-board, intending to annex quietly any message addressed to Martin, and act upon any appointment it contained.

But, alas! my watchfulness remained unrewarded.

Twice there had arrived men slightly resembling the dead Professor, clean-shaven and active, but by careful observation I discovered that one was a commercial traveller whose samples had been left below in the station, and the other was a well-known iron merchant of Walsall.

The false Professor, the man who was plainly in association with the mysterious Kirk, was clearly in Glasgow, yet how was it possible for me to do more than I was doing towards his unmasking?

Put to yourself that problem, you, my friend, for whom I have chronicled this plain, unvarnished story of what actually occurred to me in the year of grace 1907, and inquire of yourself its solution.

“Who killed Professor Greer?”

Chapter Fourteen

A Remarkable Truth

The morning was cold, with fine driving rain, when at eight o’clock I alighted from a hansom before my own house in Bath Road, and entered with my latch-key. In the dining-room I found Annie, the housemaid, in the act of lighting the fire, but turning suddenly upon me with surprise, she exclaimed:

“Oh, sir! You gave me quite a turn! We didn’t expect to see you back again just yet.”

“Why not?” I inquired, with some surprise. “We thought you were with the mistress, sir.”

“With my wife. What do you mean?”

“Mrs Holford obeyed your telegram, sir, and has left for Italy.”

“For Italy!” I gasped. “Where’s Miss Gwen? Go and ask her if she can see me at once.” And I followed the maid upstairs.

In a few moments Gwen Raeburn, my wife’s sister, a young, pretty, dark girl of seventeen, who wore a big black bow in her hair, came out of her room wrapped in a blue kimono.

“Why, Harry!” she cried. “What’s the matter? I thought Mabel had gone to join you.”

“I’ve just come down from Glasgow, where I’ve been on business,” I explained. “Where is Mabel?”

“I don’t know, except that I saw her off from Victoria at eleven the day before yesterday.”

“But why has she gone?”

“To meet you,” replied the girl. “The morning before last, at a few minutes past eight, she received a telegram signed by you, urging her to meet you at the Hôtel Grande Bretagne in Florence at the earliest possible moment. Therefore she obeyed it at once, and left by the eleven o’clock train. It was a terrible rush to get her off, I can tell you. But haven’t you been in Florence?”

“No, I’ve been in Scotland,” I repeated. “Did you read the telegram she received?”

“Yes; it was very brief, but to the point. Mabel was annoyed that you had not told her the reason you had gone abroad without explanation. She feared that, in view of your preoccupied manner of late, something disastrous had happened to you. That’s why she left so hurriedly. I wanted to go with her, but she wouldn’t allow me.”

“I wish you had gone, Gwen,” I said. “There’s some plot here – some deep and treacherous conspiracy.”

“Why, what has happened?”

“A lot has happened,” I said. “You shall know it all later on. At present I haven’t time to explain. I suppose the telegram isn’t left about anywhere?”

“Mabel took it with her.”

“You didn’t notice whence it had been despatched?” I asked.

“From Turin. We concluded that you had halted there, on your way from Paris.”

I was silent. What plot had those blackguards formed against me and mine! Why had my dear wife Mabel been decoyed out to Italy by them? I grew apprehensive and furious.

My sister-in-law descended with me to the dining-room. She saw my agitation, and after the first surprise had worn off tried to calm me.

“There’s a perfectly feasible explanation, I’m sure, Harry,” she said. “Perhaps it is some practical joke being played upon you and Mabel by your friends. They want you out in the South for a week or two to escape from the cold and wet of the London spring. I wouldn’t worry, if I were you.”

“Ah, Gwen!” I sighed. “You are unaware of all the grim circumstances,” I said. “There’s a serious conspiracy here, I’m convinced. The hand of a secret enemy has been lifted against me.”

Had that crafty servant at Sussex Place dispatched the false message, I wondered? Or was it Kirk himself? And if so, with what motive? Was Mabel, my beloved and devoted wife, to fall helplessly into their unscrupulous hands? My blood rose within me when I reflected how innocently I had walked into the trap which my mysterious neighbour had prepared for me.

I took up a Bradshaw, and saw that if I left Charing Cross by the boat-train at 2:20 I might, by good chance, catch the night mail for Italy by the Mont Cenis from the Gare de Lyon. I could only do it if we ran into the Gare du Nord in time. But from experience I knew that the afternoon service to Paris was pretty punctual, and one usually arrived in the French capital about 9:20. Then, by the aid of a taxi-cab, I could get across to the Lyons station in time.

So I decided to make the attempt. I had been in Italy several times when a youth, and knew Italian fairly well. My father, before the smash in his fortunes, had rented a villa for several years up at Vallombrosa, in the chestnut-clad mountains above Florence.

“May I come with you, Harry?” pleaded my sister-in-law. “If Mabel is in any danger it is only right that you should take me to her.”

I knew how devoted the girl was to her sister. A year ago she had come to us from Caen, where she had been at school, and among the languages in which she was proficient was Italian. I hardly cared, in the circumstances, to leave her alone; therefore, although a big hole must be made in my slender bank account, I resolved to take a second ticket for her.