‘I want to change the subject, old chap,’ he said. ‘I want to talk about Elizabeth Marlowe. A blind man could have seen that you were’—he hesitated—‘well, that you were uncommonly fond of her. . . . You’ve been out to help her all along.’
‘She turned me down,’ said Alan with a shrug—‘turned me down completely.’
‘H’m, and you’re feeling sore about it?’
‘A bit,’ confessed Alan. ‘But why do you ask?’
Tripp hesitated again. ‘Because there’s just the chance,’ he said slowly, ‘that a warrant may be issued for her arrest this evening.’
Gilmour drew in a long breath. ‘So it’s come to that!’ he said slowly.
‘It depends upon herself. She’s been back in London since last evening, and, though she mayn’t know it, her rooms at Somers Town have been under observation all night.’
Alan’s hands were clenched. ‘I’ll admit things have looked black against her, but I’ll swear there’s some explanation——’
‘She’ll have the chance of making it to-day,’ said Tripp quietly. ‘I’m telling you this in confidence, Gilmour. If the worst happens, I don’t want it to come as a shock to you. Can I rely on you not to try to see her to-day?’ Noticing the younger man’s set face, Tripp’s hand dropped on his shoulder with a friendly pressure. ‘I’m devilish sorry, old chap. Now I must be getting back to the Yard. Holtby’s had no breakfast yet—he’s keeping my chair warm for me. Divisional reports will be piling up on my desk.’
‘What’s going to happen now?’ asked Alan, moving to the door. ‘I suppose Lord John has cleared out too?’
‘He hasn’t,’ said Tripp. ‘We know for a fact that he was one of the invited guests at Mrs. Prideaux’s on Friday night. We’ve gone to enormous trouble on this point. I think I told you that the list has been narrowed down to two dozen names, and every one of these people is under observation at this moment. And if we get our man in the end it will be at the Marquise Hotel.’
‘Then you think he’s going to get busy there——’
‘All last week our information pointed to it. He’s been in and out of that hotel in various disguises—Paul Stainer, for one! Getting the lie of the land, no doubt. Yes, I think he’ll try for a final coup at the “Marquise”—then retire from business.’
‘But the risks will be terrific. Will he chance it?’
‘I hope so!’ Inspector Tripp laughed grimly. ‘There’s a wealthy crowd stopping at the “Marquise” just now. You know that yourself.’
Alan nodded. ‘There’s plenty of temptation, I’ll admit. One or two millionaires, and an Eastern Rajah arrives to-day.’
‘But there’s more than mere loot in it,’ said Tripp. ‘There’s the human element. Lord John has laughed so long at Scotland Yard it would probably tickle his sense of humour to snap his fingers in our faces for the last time!’
Tripp had been talking in the little square hall, and he opened the door. ‘What time do you leave the “Marquise”?’
‘This evening. I move to Cumming’s Hotel off Piccadilly.’
‘Cumming’s? Right; I’ll ring you up later in the week, and we’ll lunch together. Good-bye, Gilmour.’
Alan made his way slowly up Whitehall in the drizzling rain. After a week of autumn sunshine the weather had broken; the air was raw and cold, and Alan’s spirits were in harmony with the gloom and depression of the wet streets. He was sorry for Tripp: the detective had worked like a galley-slave, and with amazing skill the man he sought had outwitted him. It was as though Lord John had his secret tentacles in the very heart of Scotland Yard itself! Knowing, as he probably did, that the police were alert at the Marquise Hotel, would he dare to attempt a final coup within its doors? That was almost impossible to believe. Yet Tripp seemed confident that this would happen. . . .
Before lunch Alan went upstairs to finish his packing. When he had locked the last of his suit-cases, and pulled the final strap into position, he straightened up and surveyed the room where he had lived for the last eight days. The thought of leave-taking saddened him. He had spent many happy morning hours dawdling over breakfast at that big window looking out across St. James’s Park, with its trees now turning brown and gold, and the waters of the lake flashing like silver in the sunlight, and the traffic speeding up and down The Mall. It was in this room he had first spoken to Inspector Tripp; it was here he had been asked to help in the most puzzling case that ever taxed the brains of the Criminal Investigation Department. Here, too, he had spent hours of abject misery, with the sad and beautiful face of Elizabeth Marlowe passing and repassing before his mind’s eye; he had paced this floor, sometimes for hours on end, in an agony of utter helplessness. And now he was leaving it all behind. . . . It was like the last closing of a door, the final turning of a key on an empty house that had long been one’s home. . . .
It was in this dismal vein that his thoughts ran during luncheon. His eyes moved gloomily around the grill-room. He recognized the heavy features of Isadore Mainz, the man who had made millions out of gold-mining interests in South Africa; he saw the much-photographed Countess Terracina, one of the few members of the old Austrian aristocracy who had retained her great wealth. The figure in the far corner caught his eye, and the dusky face, surmounted by a turban, indicated that the Rajah of Nalbari had arrived.
Alan rose from the table, deciding to go upstairs and say good-bye to Elizabeth Marlowe. He hadn’t seen Sir Richard Templeton that morning, and the barrister was not in the grill-room, so presumably he was out, and the way clear. But as Alan stepped out of the lift on the second floor he suddenly changed his mind. Inspector Tripp was relying on him not to see Elizabeth that day, and if anything went wrong . . . If anything went wrong! The words seemed to ring in his ears like the sinister echo of what had been in his thoughts all morning. He paused, and was stepping back into the lift, when he saw a man emerge from a room in the corridor towards the left.
Alan gave him no more than a passing glance, but noticed that he had turned aside, and, instead of taking the lift, had hurried downstairs. Where had he seen that face before? It was only a glimpse of the profile he had caught, and the collar of the overcoat had concealed the lower part of the face, yet it struck a responsive chord. On the ground floor he watched the foot of the stairs. The man appeared; but instead of going towards the entrance hall, he turned sharp left, and went quickly down the corridor to the side-entrance of the hotel. . . .
Then back to Alan’s mind there flashed the memory of an upper room at ‘The Green Lantern’.
The man was Mr. Julius Brown!
For several minutes Alan stood amazed. Julius Brown in the Marquise Hotel! Wanted by the police, yet he had been foolhardy enough to walk into this place! The effrontery of it almost dazzled Alan as he watched the retreating figure.
He raced down the corridor after the man, but by the time he had reached the glass doors Julius Brown was already seated in a low sports car which stood by the kerb. There was a puff of smoke from the exhaust, and the car shot up the narrow street towards Trafalgar Square. Five seconds earlier, Alan thought with chagrin—five seconds, and he might have been in time to do something! Five seconds! . . .
‘Can you follow that car?’
Alan addressed a young man who was lighting a cigarette preparatory to stepping into a big red touring-car a few yards away.
‘Why, what’s up?’
‘He’s wanted by the police!—one of the Lord John crowd! . . .’
‘Lord John!’ The young man gave a low whistle. ‘But are you certain? Who the devil are you, anyway?’