It was the skylight half-way up the roof that was now the object of his attention. He examined it carefully, and then drew from his pocket a small curved instrument of thin, pliable steel. This he inserted below the lower edge and pushed it home; presently the bar inside slipped from its fastening, and the skylight slowly opened. He laid it flat back against the slates and, leaning inwards, flashed around a small electric torch. A moment later he was lowering himself to the floor of the tiny room below.
This low-ceilinged attic was furnished with a taste that seemed oddly out of keeping in that poverty-stricken street. The ray of the man’s torch moved quickly about, resting for a moment on the simple dressing-table, with its bright appointments, on the chintz curtain that formed a wardrobe in the corner, on the clean bedspread and the cream-washed walls. All this the man gathered in one brief survey, and then began to search.
One by one he went rapidly through the drawers of the dressing-table. A leather writing-case on a shelf attracted his interest, and a suit-case in the corner he opened and gently closed again, then stepped into the next room. It was the kitchen, and a single bed stood against the wall on one side. He glanced into the cupboard, pulled out both drawers below, and then opened the cheap tin trunk. The light of his flash-lamp made a final circle, and he stepped silently through into the sitting-room next door. It was poorly furnished, but like the bedroom everything was spotlessly clean. The man worked more rapidly now. Some letters on the mantelpiece he glanced through, and moved on to a small cabinet with a row of books above. And then, beyond an arm-chair in the corner, something caught his eye.
He pulled aside the cloth covering and found an old leather trunk. In a moment he was on his knees before it, and had lifted back the lid. Some folded garments lay on the top, and these he took out to examine the contents beneath. He paused with a grunt of disappointment, and was about to replace the articles he had removed when a low exclamation escaped from his lips. His hand went down to the foot of the trunk, and eagerly he lifted out a small box and set it on the table.
It was made of some polished wood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and was locked. But this did not seem to distress him. With the aid of a bunch of small, curiously shaped keys he had it open in a few minutes, and was shining his torch inside.
Once more a murmur of disappointment rose to his lips. The contents of the box looked as though they had not been disturbed for many years. Some faded letters, a little bundle of crumpled dance-programmes, a tiny curl of hair in an envelope, a cameo brooch, a string of coral beads, and perhaps a dozen old photographs—nothing else. He was on the point of replacing them when one of the photographs attracted his attention. It was a picture of a man, and though rather badly faded, the features were still distinct.
For nearly a minute the ray of the torch shone steadily upon it. The photographer’s name and address showed that it had been taken in Paris. The man made a rapid note on a piece of paper, slipped the photograph back among the others, and replaced the contents of the box.
He was in the act of closing the lid of the trunk when a distant sound of voices broke in on the silence of the room. A key rattled in the lock of the outer door. In an instant the man had switched out his torch, and was silently retreating. Through the kitchen and into the small bedroom he went, and in less than a minute he was on the roof, lowering the skylight back into position.
He withdrew the same way as he had come, reaching the roof of the outhouse, and dropping into the dark passage, whence he slouched in an apparently aimless way towards the main thoroughfare, and climbed on the top of a bus. By the time eleven o’clock was striking, Chief Inspector Tripp sat in a deep arm-chair in his modest ground-floor flat at Westminster, thoughtfully watching the blue smoke curl up from his briar pipe. He had found nothing of interest in Elizabeth Marlowe’s home—except one thing, and that was paramount. The photograph he had found in the inlaid box was the duplicate of one that had already occupied many hours of his attention, namely, the cracked faded photograph which was the sole relic left from the burglary of the Lord John evidence at Sir Richard Templeton’s suite the night before.
CHAPTER XIII
ALAN DECIDES TO ACT
While Alan Gilmour waited outside a door in the riverside inn at Thames Wall, a rapid conversation was being carried on in whispers within the room.
Presently the door was opened again, and a man appeared.
‘I am Mr. Brown,’ he announced.
The light was behind him, throwing his face into shadow, but Gilmour got an impression of clean-shaven, finely cut features and a mobile mouth. The man looked about fifty, was well groomed, and the hand which he held out was white and delicate, with carefully tended finger-nails. ‘You have a letter for me?’
‘I want to apologize about this,’ said Gilmour. ‘It should have reached you this afternoon. I’m to blame—I promised to send it off, but forgot about it till half an hour ago.’
Mr. Brown tore open the envelope and scanned the contents of the letter. ‘It’s all right,’ he said off-handedly. ‘There’s no reply. Thank you.’
He smiled and nodded, closing the door as Alan turned away and made for the head of the stairs. Here, the sullen-faced man was awaiting him with a candle which he had lit, and conducted him down to the front door. There was a surly good night, and Gilmour found himself in the narrow, ill-lighted street with a key turning in the lock behind him.
He crossed to the opposite pavement and, standing beside a warehouse door, looked up at the place he had just quitted. It was much larger than he had thought at first. On each side of it a narrow alley terminated in stone steps that ran down into the lapping water. Though the building looked old and ramshackle, the lower half might once have been a house of some distinction in the days before this stretch of the river had been transformed into a human rabbit-warren intersected by warehouses. At the other end, above the public-house with the inn-sign ‘The Green Lantern,’ there were several lighted windows, but the portion immediately above him was in darkness. Alan walked a little way along the pavement, and round the corner in the alley saw a dim flood of light from an open door. This evidently was the hotel entrance, and the other part of the building appeared to be the private quarters of the proprietor. The entire episode had left an unpleasant effect on Alan’s mind. He recalled Mr. Young’s face as he had seen it darkly against the light of the room beyond. The man was certainly not English, or at any rate he had Eastern blood of some kind in his veins, and from the soft, singing note of his voice Gilmour was inclined to think that his first impression had been correct—Mr. Young was partly Chinese. As for Mr. Julius Brown, he had the clothes and bearings of a gentleman: what strange business could have brought him to such a place as this? . . . And Mrs. Prideaux—and the others? . . . If there had been cards and money on the table, and if other rooms had been occupied as well, one would have concluded that Mr. Young used a portion of ‘The Green Lantern’ as a gambling-den for those with a taste for the bizarre; but there had been no suggestion of anything of the kind. Why should Elizabeth Marlowe be in communication with one of the curious group in that upper room? Alan recalled her anxiety that the letter should not be dispatched from the Marquise Hotel, and she had asked him particularly not to give her name at the messenger office. To say the least, it was queer—and, indeed, taken in conjunction with what had happened in the last twenty-four hours, it was more than queer! Possibly, he told himself, if it hadn’t been for that glimpse he had got of Mrs. Prideaux in the room, he mightn’t have thought so much about it. But Mrs. Prideaux! The woman whose telephone number he had seen in Paul Stainer’s hands. The woman at whose house in Carbery Square Sir Richard Templeton had probably been at the time the Lord John evidence had been stolen from his safe at the Marquise Hotel. . . . Walking slowly down the cobbled street, Alan Gilmour made his way along the narrow passage, and emerged into the lighted thoroughfare in a distinctly perplexed frame of mind. He picked up a taxi-cab near the Tower Bridge, and as he drove along the Embankment an idea struck him: he called to the driver to go straight on, and gave an address near Westminster. Before returning to the hotel he decided that it might be advisable to have a short talk with Inspector Tripp.