The fog was as thick as ever, and he had some difficulty in detecting even the breaks at the edge of the pavement which indicated the positions of house-gates. The walls of the gardens were concealed behind the climbing curtain of vapour. He counted seven entrances and was well on the way to the next when suddenly the roar of a horn made him lift his eyes to the spaces ahead; two golden discs shone almost upon him and only a wild wrench at the wheel saved him from a collision as the strange car swept past on the wrong side.
"Damn their eyes!" he grumbled to himself. "People like that should be hanged. No one has a right to go barging along at twenty miles an hour on a night like this, hustling everyone out of their way. And on the wrong side of the road, too."
In his swerve he had lost touch with the pavement and he now crept back to the left, steering in gently for fear of rubbing his tyres on the kerb. Then he began counting the gates once more.
"Eight . . . Nine . . . Ten . . . Eleven . . . Twelve. It’s the next one."
He passed the next gate and drew up just beyond it. Then reflecting that it was hardly safe to leave a car on the street in a night like this, he got down from his seat and went across the pavement to open the gate of the short drive leading up to the house. The entrance was clear, however, and he was about to return to his car when a thought struck him and he lit a match to examine the pillar of the gate.
"No number, of course!" he commented in annoyance. "Ivy Lodge. This must be the place, anyhow."
Returning to his car, he backed it past the gate and then drove in and up the carriage-way. Just in time, as he came near the front door, the lights of a standing car warned him and he pulled up short to avoid a collision. Shutting off his engine, he got out and approached the house, passing a lighted window as he did so. The standing car was empty, and he climbed the steps to the front door, from which a light was shining. After some searching he discovered the press-button and rang the bell. The fog seemed thicker than ever; and as he stood on the steps and gazed out into it, he could see no lights except those of the empty motor and his own headlamps. The house seemed completely isolated from the world.
Growing impatient, as no one came to open the door, he rang again; and then, after a shorter interval, he held his finger down on the button until it seemed impossible that anyone in the house could fail to hear the sound of the bell. But still no one appeared. The lighted rooms and the waiting car convinced him that there must be someone on the premises; and once more he set the bell in action.
As its notes died away again, he bent towards the door and strained his ears to catch any sound of movement within the building. At first he heard nothing; but all at once something attracted his attention: a noise like a muffled cough. Dr. Ringwood hesitated for only a moment or two.
"Something damned queer about this house, it seems to me," he commented inwardly. "Technically it’s burglary, I suppose; but if the door’s unlocked, I think I’d better go in and look round."
The door opened as he turned the handle, and he stepped softly into the hall. Everything seemed normal in the house. He could hear the ticking of a grandfather’s clock further back on the stairs; but the noise which had first attracted his attention was not repeated. Gently closing the door to shut out the fog, he stood for a moment listening intently.
"Anybody here?" he demanded in a carrying voice.
There was no answer; but after a short time he heard again the sound which had puzzled him, evidently coming from the lighted room on the ground floor. Half a dozen swift steps took him to the door which he flung open.
"Good God! What’s wrong with you?" he ejaculated, as his glance caught the only occupant of the smoke-room into which he had come.
On a chesterfield, a fair-haired young man was lying helpless. From the red stain on the lips, Dr. Ringwood guessed at a hæmorrhage of the lungs; and the quantity of blood on the boy’s shirt-front and the dark pool on the carpet pointed to the severity of the attack. The youth’s eyes caught the newcomer, and he beckoned feebly to the doctor. Ringwood crossed to the chesterfield and bent down. It hardly needed an expert to see that assistance had come too late. The sufferer made an effort, and the doctor stooped to catch the words.
". . . Caught me . . . pistol . . . shot . . . thought it was . . . all right . . . never guessed . . ."
Dr. Ringwood bent closer.
"Who was it?" he demanded.
But that broken and gasped-out message had been the victim’s last effort. With the final word, a cough shook him; blood poured from his mouth; and he fell back among the cushions in the terminal convulsion.
Dr. Ringwood saw the jaw drop and realised that he could be of no further service. Suddenly his weariness, accentuated by the strain of the drive through the fog, descended upon him once more. He straightened himself with something of an effort and gazed down at the body, feeling himself curiously detached from this suddenly-emergent mystery, as though it were no direct concern of his. Then, in his own despite, his cool medical brain began to work as though by some volition independent of his own. He drew out his notebook and jotted down the few disjointed words which he had caught, lest he should forget them later on.
Still held by the rigour of his training, he stooped once more and made a close examination of the body, discovering in the course of it two tiny tears in the dress shirt which evidently marked the entries of the bullets which had pierced the lungs. Then, his inspection completed, he left the body undisturbed, noted the time on his wrist-watch, and made a further jotting in his pocket-book.
As he did so, a fresh idea crossed his mind. Had there been more murders? What about the maids in the house? The one who had rung him up must have been somewhere on the premises, dead or alive. Possibly the murderer himself was still lurking in the villa.
Too tired to think of risk, Dr. Ringwood set himself to explore the house; but to his amazement he discovered that it was empty. Nowhere did he see the slightest sign of anything which suggested a divergence from normal routine. The cloak-room showed that two men lived on the premises, since he noted hats of two different sizes on the pegs; and there appeared to be three bedrooms in use, apart from the servants’ rooms on the upper floor.
The next step was obviously to ring up the police, he reflected. The sooner this affair was off his shoulders, the better. But at this point there flashed across his mind the picture of a methodical and possibly slow detective who might even be suspicious of Ringwood himself and wish to detain him till the whole affair was cleared up. That would be a nuisance. Then a way out of the difficulty opened up before him. He remembered paying a visit on the previous night to a butler down with ’flu. When he had seen the patient, the man’s master had come and made inquiries about the case; and Ringwood had been able to reassure him as to the man’s condition.
"What was that chap’s name?" Ringwood questioned his memory. "Sir Clinton Something-or-other. He’s Chief Constable or some such big bug. When in doubt, go to headquarters. He’ll remember me, I expect; he didn’t look as if much slipped past him. And that’ll save me from a lot of bother at the hands of underlings. What the devil was his name? Sir Clinton . . . Driffield, that’s it. I’ll ring him up."
He glanced round the hall in which he was standing but saw no telephone.
"It’s probably in the smoke-room where the body is," he suggested to himself.
But though he searched all the likely places in the house he was unable to find any instrument.
"They haven’t a ’phone, evidently," he was driven to admit. "But in that case, I can’t be in Silverdale’s house at all. This must be the wrong shop."