The Clue of the Twisted Candle

“Never mind when she came to you,” said T. X. impatiently. “Have you a message from the lady?”

“Well, it’s like this, sir,” said Mrs. Cassley, leaning forward confidentially and speaking in the hollow tone which she had decided should accompany any revelation to a police officer, “this young lady said to me, ‘If I don’t come any night by 8 o’clock you must go to T. X. and tell him—‘!”

She paused dramatically.

“Yes, yes,” said T. X. quickly, “for heaven’s sake go on, woman.”

“‘Tell him,’” said Mrs. Cassley, “‘that Belinda Mary—‘”

He sprang to his feet.

“Belinda Mary!” he breathed, “Belinda Mary!” In a flash he saw it all. This girl with a knowledge of modern Greek, who was working in Kara’s house, was there for a purpose. Kara had something of her mother’s, something that was vital and which he would not part with, and she had adopted this method of securing that some thing. Mrs. Cassley was prattling on, but her voice was merely a haze of sound to him. It brought a strange glow to his heart that Belinda Mary should have thought of him.

“Only as a policeman, of course,” said the still, small voice of his official self. “Perhaps!” said the human T. X., defiantly.

He got on the telephone to Mansus and gave a few instructions.

“You stay here,” he ordered the astounded Mrs. Cassley; “I am going to make a few investigations.”

Kara was at home, but was in bed. T. X. remembered that this extraordinary man invariably went to bed early and that it was his practice to receive visitors in this guarded room of his. He was admitted almost at once and found Kara in his silk dressing-gown lying on the bed smoking. The heat of the room was unbearable even on that bleak February night.

“This is a pleasant surprise,” said Kara, sitting up; “I hope you don’t mind my dishabille.”

T. X. came straight to the point.

“Where is Miss Holland!” he asked.

“Miss Holland?” Kara’s eyebrows advertised his astonishment. “What an extraordinary question to ask me, my dear man! At her home, or at the theatre or in a cinema palace—I don’t know how these people employ their evenings.”

“She is not at home,” said T. X., “and I have reason to believe that she has not left this house.”

“What a suspicious person you are, Mr. Meredith!” Kara rang the bell and Fisher came in with a cup of coffee on a tray.

“Fisher,” drawled Kara. “Mr. Meredith is anxious to know where Miss Holland is. Will you be good enough to tell him, you know more about her movements than I do.”

“As far as I know, sir,” said Fisher deferentially, “she left the house about 5.30, her usual hour. She sent me out a little before five on a message and when I came back her hat and her coat had gone, so I presume she had gone also.”

“Did you see her go?” asked T. X.

The man shook his head.

“No, sir, I very seldom see the lady come or go. There has been no restrictions placed upon the young lady and she has been at liberty to move about as she likes. I think I am correct in saying that, sir,” he turned to Kara.

Kara nodded.

“You will probably find her at home.”

He shook his finger waggishly at T. X.

“What a dog you are,” he jibed, “I ought to keep the beauties of my household veiled, as we do in the East, and especially when I have a susceptible policeman wandering at large.”

T. X. gave jest for jest. There was nothing to be gained by making trouble here. After a few amiable commonplaces he took his departure. He found Mrs. Cassley being entertained by Mansus with a wholly fictitious description of the famous criminals he had arrested.

“I can only suggest that you go home,” said T. X. “I will send a police officer with you to report to me, but in all probability you will find the lady has returned. She may have had a difficulty in getting a bus on a night like this.”

A detective was summoned from Scotland Yard and accompanied by him Mrs. Cassley returned to her domicile with a certain importance. T. X. looked at his watch. It was a quarter to ten.

“Whatever happens, I must see old Lexman,” he said. “Tell the best men we’ve got in the department to stand by for eventualities. This is going to be one of my busy days.”

CHAPTER XII

Kara lay back on his down pillows with a sneer on his face and his brain very busy. What started the train of thought he did not know, but at that moment his mind was very far away. It carried him back a dozen years to a dirty little peasant’s cabin on the hillside outside Durazzo, to the livid face of a young Albanian chief, who had lost at Kara’s whim all that life held for a man, to the hateful eyes of the girl’s father, who stood with folded arms glaring down at the bound and manacled figure on the floor, to the smoke-stained rafters of this peasant cottage and the dancing shadows on the roof, to that terrible hour of waiting when he sat bound to a post with a candle flickering and spluttering lower and lower to the little heap of gunpowder that would start the trail toward the clumsy infernal machine under his chair. He remembered the day well because it was Candlemas day, and this was the anniversary. He remembered other things more pleasant. The beat of hoofs on the rocky roadway, the crash of the door falling in when the Turkish Gendarmes had battered a way to his rescue. He remembered with a savage joy the spectacle of his would-be assassins twitching and struggling on the gallows at Pezara and—he heard the faint tinkle of the front door bell.

Had T. X. returned! He slipped from the bed and went to the door, opened it slightly and listened. T. X. with a search warrant might be a source of panic especially if—he shrugged his shoulders. He had satisfied T. X. and allayed his suspicions. He would get Fisher out of the way that night and make sure.

The voice from the hall below was loud and gruff. Who could it be! Then he heard Fisher’s foot on the stairs and the valet entered.

“Will you see Mr. Gathercole now!”

“Mr. Gathercole!”

Kara breathed a sigh of relief and his face was wreathed in smiles.

“Why, of course. Tell him to come up. Ask him if he minds seeing me in my room.”

“I told him you were in bed, sir, and he used shocking language,” said Fisher.

Kara laughed.

“Send him up,” he said, and then as Fisher was going out of the room he called him back.

“By the way, Fisher, after Mr. Gathercole has gone, you may go out for the night. You’ve got somewhere to go, I suppose, and you needn’t come back until the morning.”

“Yes, sir,” said the servant.

Such an instruction was remarkably pleasing to him. There was much that he had to do and that night’s freedom would assist him materially.

“Perhaps” Kara hesitated, “perhaps you had better wait until eleven o’clock. Bring me up some sandwiches and a large glass of milk. Or better still, place them on a plate in the hall.”

“Very good, sir,” said the man and withdrew.

Down below, that grotesque figure with his shiny hat and his ragged beard was walking up and down the tesselated hallway muttering to himself and staring at the various objects in the hall with a certain amused antagonism.

“Mr. Kara will see you, sir,” said Fisher.

“Oh!” said the other glaring at the unoffending Fisher, “that’s very good of him. Very good of this person to see a scholar and a gentleman who has been about his dirty business for three years. Grown grey in his service! Do you understand that, my man!”

“Yes, sir,” said Fisher.

“Look here!”

The man thrust out his face.

“Do you see those grey hairs in my beard?”

The embarrassed Fisher grinned.

“Is it grey!” challenged the visitor, with a roar.

“Yes, sir,” said the valet hastily.

“Is it real grey?” insisted the visitor. “Pull one out and see!”

The startled Fisher drew back with an apologetic smile.

“I couldn’t think of doing a thing like that, sir.”

“Oh, you couldn’t,” sneered the visitor; “then lead on!”

Fisher showed the way up the stairs. This time the traveller carried no books. His left arm hung limply by his side and Fisher privately gathered that the hand had got loose from the detaining pocket without its owner being aware of the fact. He pushed open the door and announced, “Mr. Gathercole,” and Kara came forward with a smile to meet his agent, who, with top hat still on the top of his head, and his overcoat dangling about his heels, must have made a remarkable picture.

Fisher closed the door behind them and returned to his duties in the hall below. Ten minutes later he heard the door opened and the booming voice of the stranger came down to him. Fisher went up the stairs to meet him and found him addressing the occupant of the room in his own eccentric fashion.

“No more Patagonia!” he roared, “no more Tierra del Fuego!” he paused.

“Certainly!” He replied to some question, “but not Patagonia,” he paused again, and Fisher standing at the foot of the stairs wondered what had occurred to make the visitor so genial.

“I suppose your cheque will be honoured all right?” asked the visitor sardonically, and then burst into a little chuckle of laughter as he carefully closed the door.

He came down the corridor talking to himself, and greeted Fisher.

“Damn all Greeks,” he said jovially, and Fisher could do no more than smile reproachfully, the smile being his very own, the reproach being on behalf of the master who paid him.

The traveller touched the other on the chest with his right hand.

“Never trust a Greek,” he said, “always get your money in advance. Is that clear to you?”

“Yes, sir,” said Fisher, “but I think you will always find that Mr. Kara is always most generous about money.”

“Don’t you believe it, don’t you believe it, my poor man,” said the other, “you—”

At that moment there came from Kara’s room a faint “clang.”

“What’s that?” asked the visitor a little startled.

“Mr. Kara’s put down his steel latch,” said Fisher with a smile, “which means that he is not to be disturbed until—” he looked at his watch, “until eleven o’clock at any rate.”

“He’s a funk!” snapped the other, “a beastly funk!”

He stamped down the stairs as though testing the weight of every tread, opened the front door without assistance, slammed it behind him and disappeared into the night.

Fisher, his hands in his pockets, looked after the departing stranger, nodding his head in reprobation.

“You’re a queer old devil,” he said, and looked at his watch again.

It wanted five minutes to ten.

CHAPTER XIII

“IF you would care to come in, sir, I’m sure Lexman would be glad to see you,” said T. X.; “it’s very kind of you to take an interest in the matter.”

The Chief Commissioner of Police growled something about being paid to take an interest in everybody and strolled with T. X. down one of the apparently endless corridors of Scotland Yard.

“You won’t have any bother about the pardon,” he said. “I was dining to-night with old man Bartholomew and he will fix that up in the morning.”

“There will be no necessity to detain Lexman in custody?” asked T. X.

The Chief shook his head.

“None whatever,” he said.

There was a pause, then,

“By the way, did Bartholomew mention Belinda Mary!”

The white-haired chief looked round in astonishment.

“And who the devil is Belinda Mary?” he asked.

T. X. went red.

“Belinda Mary,” he said a little quickly, “is Bartholomew’s daughter.”

“By Jove,” said the Commissioner, “now you mention it, he did—she is still in France.”

“Oh, is she?” said T. X. innocently, and in his heart of hearts he wished most fervently that she was. They came to the room which Mansus occupied and found that admirable man waiting.

Wherever policemen meet, their conversation naturally drifts to “shop” and in two minutes the three were discussing with some animation and much difference of opinion, as far as T. X. was concerned, a series of frauds which had been perpetrated in the Midlands, and which have nothing to do with this story.

“Your friend is late,” said the Chief Commissioner.

“There he is,” cried T. X., springing up. He heard a familiar footstep on the flagged corridor, and sprung out of the room to meet the newcomer.

For a moment he stood wringing the hand of this grave man, his heart too full for words.

“My dear chap!” he said at last, “you don’t know how glad I am to see you.”

John Lexman said nothing, then,

“I am sorry to bring you into this business, T. X.,” he said quietly.

“Nonsense,” said the other, “come in and see the Chief.”

He took John by the arm and led him into the Superintendent’s room.

There was a change in John Lexman. A subtle shifting of balance which was not readily discoverable. His face was older, the mobile mouth a little more grimly set, the eyes more deeply lined. He was in evening dress and looked, as T. X. thought, a typical, clean, English gentleman, such an one as any self-respecting valet would be proud to say he had “turned out.”

T. X. looking at him carefully could see no great change, save that down one side of his smooth shaven cheek ran the scar of an old wound; which could not have been much more than superficial.

“I must apologize for this kit,” said John, taking off his overcoat and laying it across the back of a chair, “but the fact is I was so bored this evening that I had to do something to pass the time away, so I dressed and went to the theatre—and was more bored than ever.”

T. X. noticed that he did not smile and that when he spoke it was slowly and carefully, as though he were weighing the value of every word.

“Now,” he went on, “I have come to deliver myself into your hands.”

“I suppose you have not seen Kara?” said T. X.

“I have no desire to see Kara,” was the short reply.

“Well, Mr. Lexman,” broke in the Chief, “I don’t think you are going to have any difficulty about your escape. By the way, I suppose it was by aeroplane?”

Lexman nodded.

“And you had an assistant?”

Again Lexman nodded.

“Unless you press me I would rather not discuss the matter for some little time, Sir George,” he said, “there is much that will happen before the full story of my escape is made known.”

Sir George nodded.

“We will leave it at that,” he said cheerily, “and now I hope you have come back to delight us all with one of your wonderful plots.”

“For the time being I have done with wonderful plots,” said John Lexman in that even, deliberate tone of his. “I hope to leave London next week for New York and take up such of the threads of life as remain. The greater thread has gone.”

The Chief Commissioner understood.

The silence which followed was broken by the loud and insistent ringing of the telephone bell.

“Hullo,” said Mansus rising quickly; “that’s Kara’s bell.”

With two quick strides he was at the telephone and lifted down the receiver.

“Hullo,” he cried. “Hullo,” he cried again. There was no reply, only the continuous buzzing, and when he hung up the receiver again, the bell continued ringing.

The three policemen looked at one another.

“There’s trouble there,” said Mansus.

“Take off the receiver,” said T. X., “and try again.”

Mansus obeyed, but there was no response.

“I am afraid this is not my affair,” said John Lexman gathering up his coat. “What do you wish me to do, Sir George?”

“Come along to-morrow morning and see us, Lexman,” said Sir George, offering his hand.

“Where are you staying!” asked T. X.

“At the Great Midland,” replied the other, “at least my bags have gone on there.”

“I’ll come along and see you to-morrow morning. It’s curious this should have happened the night you returned,” he said, gripping the other’s shoulder affectionately.

John Lexman did not speak for the moment.

“If anything happened to Kara,” he said slowly, “if the worst that was possible happened to him, believe me I should not weep.”

T. X. looked down into the other’s eyes sympathetically.

“I think he has hurt you pretty badly, old man,” he said gently.

John Lexman nodded.

“He has, damn him,” he said between his teeth.

The Chief Commissioner’s motor car was waiting outside and in this T. X., Mansus, and a detective-sergeant were whirled off to Cadogan Square. Fisher was in the hall when they rung the bell and opened the door instantly.

He was frankly surprised to see his visitors. Mr. Kara was in his room he explained resentfully, as though T. X. should have been aware of the fact without being told. He had heard no bell ringing and indeed had not been summoned to the room.

“I have to see him at eleven o’clock,” he said, “and I have had standing instructions not to go to him unless I am sent for.”

T. X. led the way upstairs, and went straight to Kara’s room. He knocked, but there was no reply. He knocked again and on this failing to evoke any response kicked heavily at the door.

“Have you a telephone downstairs!” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” replied Fisher.

T. X. turned to the detective-sergeant.

“‘Phone to the Yard,” he said, “and get a man up with a bag of tools. We shall have to pick this lock and I haven’t got my case with me.”

“Picking the lock would be no good, sir,” said Fisher, an interested spectator, “Mr. Kara’s got the latch down.”

“I forgot that,” said T. X. “Tell him to bring his saw, we’ll have to cut through the panel here.”

While they were waiting for the arrival of the police officer T. X. strove to attract the attention of the inmates of the room, but without success.

“Does he take opium or anything!” asked Mansus.

Fisher shook his head.

“I’ve never known him to take any of that kind of stuff,” he said.

T. X. made a rapid survey of the other rooms on that floor. The room next to Kara’s was the library, beyond that was a dressing room which, according to Fisher, Miss Holland had used, and at the farthermost end of the corridor was the dining room.

Facing the dining room was a small service lift and by its side a storeroom in which were a number of trunks, including a very large one smothered in injunctions in three different languages to “handle with care.” There was nothing else of interest on this floor and the upper and lower floors could wait. In a quarter of an hour the carpenter had arrived from Scotland Yard, and had bored a hole in the rosewood panel of Kara’s room and was busily applying his slender saw.

Through the hole he cut T. X. could see no more than that the room was in darkness save for the glow of a blazing fire. He inserted his hand, groped for the knob of the steel latch, which he had remarked on his previous visit to the room, lifted it and the door swung open.

“Keep outside, everybody,” he ordered.

He felt for the switch of the electric, found it and instantly the room was flooded with light. The bed was hidden by the open door. T. X. took one stride into the room and saw enough. Kara was lying half on and half off the bed. He was quite dead and the blood-stained patch above his heart told its own story.

T. X. stood looking down at him, saw the frozen horror on the dead man’s face, then drew his eyes away and slowly surveyed the room. There in the middle of the carpet he found his clue, a bent and twisted little candle such as you find on children’s Christmas trees.

CHAPTER XIV

It was Mansus who found the second candle, a stouter affair. It lay underneath the bed. The telephone, which stood on a fairly large-sized table by the side of the bed, was overturned and the receiver was on the floor. By its side were two books, one being the “Balkan Question,” by Villari, and the other “Travels and Politics in the Near East,” by Miller. With them was a long, ivory paper-knife.

There was nothing else on the bedside-table save a silver cigarette box. T. X. drew on a pair of gloves and examined the bright surface for finger-prints, but a superficial view revealed no such clue.

“Open the window,” said T. X., “the heat here is intolerable. Be very careful, Mansus. By the way, is the window fastened?”

“Very well fastened,” said the superintendent after a careful scrutiny.

He pushed back the fastenings, lifted the window and as he did, a harsh bell rang in the basement.

“That is the burglar alarm, I suppose,” said T. X.; “go down and stop that bell.”

He addressed Fisher, who stood with a troubled face at the door. When he had disappeared T. X. gave a significant glance to one of the waiting officers and the man sauntered after the valet.

Fisher stopped the bell and came back to the hall and stood before the hall fire, a very troubled man. Near the fire was a big, oaken writing table and on this there lay a small envelope which he did not remember having seen before, though it might have been there for some time, for he had spent a greater portion of the evening in the kitchen with the cook.

He picked up the envelope, and, with a start, recognised that it was addressed to himself. He opened it and took out a card. There were only a few words written upon it, but they were sufficient to banish all the colour from his face and set his hands shaking. He took the envelope and card and flung them into the fire.

It so happened that, at that moment, Mansus had called from upstairs, and the officer, who had been told off to keep the valet under observation, ran up in answer to the summons. For a moment Fisher hesitated, then hatless and coatless as he was, he crept to the door, opened it, leaving it ajar behind him and darting down the steps, ran like a hare from the house.

The doctor, who came a little later, was cautious as to the hour of death.

“If you got your telephone message at 10.25, as you say, that was probably the hour he was killed,” he said. “I could not tell within half an hour. Obviously the man who killed him gripped his throat with his left hand—there are the bruises on his neck—and stabbed him with the right.”

It was at this time that the disappearance of Fisher was noticed, but the cross-examination of the terrified Mrs. Beale removed any doubt that T. X. had as to the man’s guilt.

“You had better send out an ‘All Stations’ message and pull him in,” said T. X. “He was with the cook from the moment the visitor left until a few minutes before we rang. Besides which it is obviously impossible for anybody to have got into this room or out again. Have you searched the dead man?”

Mansus produced a tray on which Kara’s belongings had been disposed. The ordinary keys Mrs. Beale was able to identify. There were one or two which were beyond her. T. X. recognised one of these as the key of the safe, but two smaller keys baffled him not a little, and Mrs. Beale was at first unable to assist him.

“The only thing I can think of, sir,” she said, “is the wine cellar.”

“The wine cellar?” said T. X. slowly. “That must be—” he stopped.

The greater tragedy of the evening, with all its mystifying aspects had not banished from his mind the thought of the girl—that Belinda Mary, who had called upon him in her hour of danger as he divined. Perhaps—he descended into the kitchen and was brought face to face with the unpainted door.

“It looks more like a prison than a wine cellar,” he said.

“That’s what I’ve always thought, sir,” said Mrs. Beale, “and sometimes I’ve had a horrible feeling of fear.”

He cut short her loquacity by inserting one of the keys in the lock—it did not turn, but he had more success with the second. The lock snapped back easily and he pulled the door back. He found the inner door bolted top and bottom. The bolts slipped back in their well-oiled sockets without any effort. Evidently Kara used this place pretty frequently, thought T. X.

He pushed the door open and stopped with an exclamation of surprise. The cellar apartment was brilliantly lit—but it was unoccupied.

“This beats the band,” said T. X.

He saw something on the table and lifted it up. It was a pair of long-bladed scissors and about the handle was wound a handkerchief. It was not this fact which startled him, but that the scissors’ blades were dappled with blood and blood, too, was on the handkerchief. He unwound the flimsy piece of cambric and stared at the monogram “B. M. B.”

He looked around. Nobody had seen the weapon and he dropped it in his overcoat pocket, and walked from the cellar to the kitchen where Mrs. Beale and Mansus awaited him.