Chapter XX

Margaret had waited a long time for Mr. Gorton to come out, and when he appeared he was in so great a hurry that he could only tell her the bare fact that he had found a man in the room and that he had escaped. It was the hall porter who supplied her with greater, and in some respects less accurate, information.

“Yes, madam, the police found a man in Mr. Maddison’s room. I caught a glimpse of him just before he got away. Good-looking fellow with a moustache, and, according to the police, a pretty desperate burglar--they found a revolver on him. Perhaps you’d like to go up and see the flat, madam?”

Margaret hesitated.

“Yes, I will,” she said, and the man took her up in the lift.

A detective had been left in charge of the disordered room; apparently she was expected, for he displayed some relief on her arrival.

“You don’t want me to stay, madam? Inspector Gorton told me that he’d like a list of anything missing, and he’ll come and see you in the morning.”

He showed her the room where the “burglar” had been. Drawers had been pulled out, a desk had been broken open (Luke had lost the key); papers littered the floor.

“Mr. Gorton doesn’t know even now what he was looking for,” said the detective. “There was a gold watch in one of the drawers, but he didn’t touch that. We know he was after the clothes.”

He showed her a big suitcase into which clothing had been thrown pell-mell. There was a dress suit, half-a-dozen shirts and collars, a wad of pocket handkerchiefs, and a suit of pajamas.

“But he must have spent a lot of time over the desk,” said the officer. “One of my mates said that he had something like a book between his shirt and his skin. He’d just felt it when he broke away and made his escape.”

“A book?” said Margaret quickly. “How very odd!”

And then her eyes fell upon an envelope on the floor and she recognized it immediately. It bore the official stamp of the Passport Office, and Luke had had it in his pocket the day before the wedding, and had shown it to her in that half-shy and half-amused way of his that sometimes irritated her. It was his new passport, decorated, rather prematurely, with a portrait of his wife. He had opened it in her presence, and she had been rather annoyed because he had light-heartedly forged her name in order to present her with the document on her wedding day.

She picked up the envelope; there was nothing inside it--this, then, was the book which the burglar had stolen--why?

There were several sheets of notepaper on the floor. She picked up one, read it and gasped. The date had been scrawled in on the top line, and it began:

My dear Hulbert, I am in a most terrible----

It was Luke’s writing! It was Luke who had been there that night. She found another sheet covered with smudged writing; this also was addressed to the solicitor, but the three scrawled lines were undecipherable. He had deliberately crossed them out. Evidently he had sat down to write a letter to Hulbert, had made two attempts and then had changed his mind.

It was so like Luke: he could never resist the temptation offered by a sheet of note paper--he must write to somebody, he had often told her.

Luke had been here; Luke was the burglar. But why?

She turned to the detective, and it was on the tip of her tongue to make the revelation when he said something that struck speech from her lips.

“He must have been a pretty bad man, that fellow--one of our men recognized him as the chap who was driving a car this afternoon when Taffanny’s was robbed. He gave one of the shop assistants a punch in the jaw----”

“But that’s impossible!” she said indignantly. “This man----”

“Ah, you’ve read about it in the papers--a bearded man. That’s right, madam, he’s taken his beard off this afternoon. Johnson--that’s the officer--saw him driving with a girl round the park.”

Again speech died on her lips.

“They got her to-night,” said the communicative detective. “Mr. Gorton’s pretty certain she’ll put up a squeal--I mean to say, she’ll tell who her companion was. From all accounts he’s a man who’s been seen about with her a great deal in the past year or two.”

She was stunned, bewildered; she could only shake her head in feeble protest.

“It couldn’t have been the same man,” she said at last.

“Do you know him--the fellow who was here?” The detective looked at her keenly.

“No, no,” she said hastily. “I only thought… it would be such an extraordinary coincidence.”

“I’ve got an idea Mr. Gorton knows him.” The detective shut the door behind her as she walked out of the room. “I heard him telling the sergeant that he might be the fellow who was knifed the night a man named Lewing was killed. If that’s the case, he’s only been out of hospital a few days.”

She offered the officer some money; he refused it with great firmness and escorted her to her taxi. She was reminded by the fare, when she reached her house, that she had been two hours absent.

Her maid was waiting up for her and she sent her down to make some coffee. Turning on all the lights in the drawing room, she opened her desk and presently found a bundle of Luke’s letters. She compared their beginnings with the two scraps of paper she had brought from the flat. There was no question at all: it was Luke’s writing. The “My dear” began characteristically in the middle of the page in every case.

It was Luke! And it had been Luke that afternoon in a car with that impossible woman! Luke who had assisted at the robbery of Taffanny’s!

She was not shocked; it was too tremendous a discovery to produce emotional phenomena of the commonplace kind. She accepted Luke Maddison, banker, burglar, hold-up man, companion of questionable ladies, with the calmness of a scientist who had happened upon a new and interesting discovery.

Here was an immense happening. To display anger or humiliation would be absurd. One has no regard for a sense of decency when fleeing from an earthquake and its tumbling walls.

She went to bed; and such is the serenity of a resolute mind that she slept dreamlessly. In the morning while she was sitting at breakfast came Inspector Gorton; she listened calmly to his confession of failure.

“The fellow ran like a hare. He must have been a trained athlete,” he said. “I’m pretty sure now that he is the fellow who was knifed in a gang fight in South London. Lewing was killed.”

“Who was Lewing?” she asked.

Gorton shrugged his broad shoulders.

“Nobody in particular, although he gave his name to a gang. The real leader of that crowd is a gentleman named Danty Morell--though he hasn’t taken any very active…”

She had put down her cup. He saw how white her face was.

“Danty Morell? You don’t mean Mr. Danton Morell who lives in Half Moon Street?”

Gorton smiled.

“Perhaps I oughtn’t to have said that, but I thought Mr. Bird had told you. You know Mr. Bird? I hope you don’t know Mr. Morell!”

“I know him very well,” she said; her voice was steady and she was smiling. “But you may rely on my discretion, Inspector--I feel almost like a Scotland Yard officer myself.”

She had her hands folded in her lap so that he could not see how they were trembling.

“He may, of course, have turned over a new leaf,” said Gorton, uneasily conscious that he had said the wrong thing. “Some of these fellows do. I know there’s been no complaint against him at the Yard for a very long time. Morell isn’t his name, of course--I forget what it was, but the Sparrow--I mean Mr. Bird knows. Wonderful fellow, Danty! He can talk the hind leg off a donkey. They say he’s the cleverest confidence man that ever operated in Europe. Perhaps he’s made enough money to retire.”

Danton Morell! How had she come to know him? She tried to trace back the friendship. Of course, it was her brother--her poor brother--who had introduced him. Rex knew so many queer people. She trusted him--she had trusted Danty. She had believed him implicitly, believed him when he told her that Luke had hounded her brother to his death, believed him when he had produced that pitiable note written on two small sheets of notepaper--that at least was genuine, for she knew her brother’s writing.

She was viewing a new world, or viewing it from a new angle; and somehow she was able to cope with problems which the day before would have terrified her. Of that new gift she was unconscious--she could only feel the effect.

Gorton, who had had very little sleep on the previous night, accepted her invitation to join her at breakfast, though he confined himself to a cup of coffee and a roll.

“You found nothing missing, I suppose? The officer I left in charge told me you’d been there looking round. Where is your good husband now, Mrs. Maddison?”

She swallowed something.

“In Spain, I think. I am going to join him in a day or two.”

“None of the wedding presents were at the flat?”

She shook her head.

“We had no wedding presents,” she smiled.

He finished his coffee, folded his serviette, and got up from the table.

“Now I’ve got a very unpleasant job which I wish somebody else was going to do,” he said.

“You’re going to arrest somebody?”

He shook his head.

“No, that wouldn’t be unpleasant--I enjoy putting these fellows behind bars; and the day I catch that enterprising gentleman who came to your flat last night will be one of the happiest I have known for years! No, this is something gruesome which would shock you, so I shan’t tell you.”

“I’m beyond being shocked,” she smiled.

“It’s nothing really,” said Gorton. “Only there was a very high tide last night, and the river police found the body of a man who had evidently been drowned in the night. I’m going down to see if I know him. From the description I had I shouldn’t be surprised if it was our burglar.”

She had said she could not be shocked. She was shocked now, and clasping her hands together so tightly that they hurt--it was only the pain that prevented her from fainting.