The one thought by which he was obsessed was how he should save Sir Hugh from disgrace. His connection with the Criminal Investigation Department placed at his disposal a marvellous network of sources of information, amazing as they were unsuspected. He was secretly glad that at last the old fellow had resolved to face bankruptcy rather than go farther in that strange career of crime, yet, at the same time, there was serious danger--for Weirmarsh was a man so unscrupulous and so vindictive that the penalty of his defiance must a.s.suredly be a severe one.

The very presence of the doctor on the platform of the South Eastern station at Victoria that morning showed that he did not intend to allow the gra.s.s to grow beneath his feet.

The novelist was still standing near the long window, looking aimlessly down upon the Embankment, with its hurrying foot-pa.s.sengers and whirling taxis.

"You seem unusually thoughtful, Fetherston," remarked Trendall with some curiosity, as he seated himself at the table and resumed the opening of his letters which his friend's visit had interrupted. "What's the matter?"

"The fact is, I'm very much puzzled."

"About what? You're generally very successful in obtaining solutions where other men have failed."

"To the problem which is greatly exercising my mind just now I can obtain no solution," he said in a low, intense voice.

"What is it? Can I help you?"

"Well," he exclaimed, with some hesitation, "I am still trying to discover why Harry Bellairs died and who killed him."

"That mystery has long ago been placed by us among those which admit of no solution, my dear fellow," declared his friend. "We did our best to throw some light upon it, but all to no purpose. I set the whole of our machinery at work at the time--days before you suspected anything wrong--but not a trace of the truth could we find."

"But what could have been the motive, do you imagine? From all accounts he was a most popular young officer, without a single enemy in the world."

"Jealousy," was the dark man's slow reply. "My own idea is that a woman killed him."

"Why?" cried Walter quickly. "What causes you to make such a suggestion?"

"Well--listen, and when I've finished you can draw your own conclusions."

CHAPTER XXIII

THE SILENCE OF THE MAN BARKER

"HARRY BELLAIRS was an old friend of mine," Trendall went on, leaning back in his padded writing-chair and turning towards where the novelist was standing. "His curious end was a problem which, of course, attracted you as a writer of fiction. The world believed his death to be due to natural causes, in view of the failure of Professors Dale and Boyd, the Home Office a.n.a.lysts, to find a trace of poison or of foul play."

"You believe, then, that he was poisoned?" asked Fetherston quickly.

The other shrugged his shoulders, saying: "How can that point be cleared up? There was no evidence of it."

"It is curious that, though we are both so intensely interested in the problem, we have never before discussed it," remarked Walter. "I am so anxious to hear your views upon one or two points. What, for instance, do you think of Barker, the dead man's valet?"

Herbert Trendall hesitated, and for a moment twisted his moustache. He was a marvellously alert man, an unusually good linguist, and a cosmopolitan to his finger-tips. He had been a detective-sergeant in the T Division of Metropolitan Police for years before his appointment as director of that section. He knew more of the criminal undercurrents on the Continent than any living Englishman, and it was he who furnished accurate information to the Surete in Paris concerning the great Humbert swindle.

"Well," he said, "if I recollect aright, the inquiries regarding him were not altogether satisfactory. Previous to his engagement by Harry he had, it seems, been valet to a man named Mitch.e.l.l, a horse-trainer of rather shady repute."

"Where is he now?"

"I really don't know, but I can easily find out--I gave orders that he was not to be lost sight of." And, scribbling a hasty memorandum, he pressed the electric b.u.t.ton upon the arm of his chair.

His secretary, a tall, thin, deep-eyed man, entered, and to him he gave the note.

"Well, let us proceed while they are looking up the information," the chief went on. "Harry Bellairs, as you know, was on the staff of Sir Hugh Elcombe, that dear, harmless old friend of yours who inspects troops and seems to do odd jobs for Whitehall. I knew Harry before he went to Sandhurst; his people, who lived up near Durham, were very civil to me once or twice and gave me some excellent pheasant-shooting. It seems that on that day in September he came up to town from Salisbury--but you know all the facts, of course?"

"I know all the facts as far as they were related in the papers," Walter said. He did not reveal the results of the close independent inquiries he had already made--results which had utterly astounded, and at the same time mystified, him.

"Well," said Trendall, "what the Press published was mostly fiction. Even the evidence given before the coroner was utterly unreliable. It was mainly given in order to mislead the jury and prevent public suspicion that there had been a sensational tragedy--I arranged it so."

"And there had been a tragedy, no doubt?"

"Of course," declared the other, leaning both elbows upon the table before him and looking straight into the novelist's pale face. "Harry came up from Salisbury, the bearer of some papers from Sir Hugh. He duly arrived at Waterloo, discharged his duty, and went to his rooms in Half Moon Street. Now, according to Barker's story, his master arrived home early in the afternoon, and sent him out on a message to Richmond. He returned a little after five, when he found his master absent."

"That was the account he gave at the inquest," remarked Fetherston.

"Yes; but it was not the truth. On testing the man's story I discovered that at three-eighteen he was in the Leicester Lounge, in Leicester Square, with an ill-dressed old man, who was described as being short and wearing a rusty, old silk hat. They sat at a table near the window drinking ginger-ale, so that the barmaid could not overhear, and held a long and confidential chat."

"He may afterwards have gone down to Richmond," his friend suggested.

"No; he remained there until past four, and then went round to the Cafe Royal, where he met another man, a foreigner, of about his own age, believed to have been a Swiss, with whom he took a cup of coffee. The man was a stranger at the cafe, probably a stranger in London. Barker was in the habit of doing a little betting, and I believe the men he met were some of his betting friends."

"Then you disbelieve the Richmond story?"

"Entirely. What seems more than probable is that Harry gave his man the afternoon off because he wished to entertain somebody clandestinely at his rooms--a woman, perhaps. Yet, as far as I've been able to discover, no one in Half Moon Street saw any stranger of either s.e.x go to his chambers that afternoon."

"You said that you believed the motive of the crime--if crime it really was--was jealousy," remarked Fetherston, thoughtfully rubbing his shaven chin.

"And I certainly do. Harry was essentially a lady's man. He was tall, and an extremely handsome fellow, a thorough-going sportsman, an excellent polo player, a perfect dancer, and a splendid rider to hounds. Little wonder was it that he was about to make a very fine match, for only a month before his death he confided to me in secret the fact--a fact known to me alone--that he was engaged to pretty little Lady Blanche Herbert, eldest daughter of the Earl of Warsborough."

"Engaged to Lady Blanche!" echoed the novelist in surprise, for the girl in question was the prettiest of that year's debutantes as well as a great heiress in her own right.

"Yes. Harry was a lucky dog, poor fellow. The engagement, known only to the Warsboroughs and myself, was to have been kept secret for a year.

Now, it is my firm opinion, Fetherston, that some other woman, one of Harry's many female friends, had got wind of it, and very cleverly had her revenge."

"Upon what grounds do you suspect that?" asked the other eagerly--for surely the problem was becoming more inscrutable than any of those in the remarkable romances which he penned.

"Well, my conclusions are drawn from several very startling facts--facts which, of course, have never leaked out to the public. But before I reveal them to you I'd like to hear what opinion you've formed yourself."

"I'm convinced that Harry Bellairs met with foul play, and I'm equally certain that the man Barker lied in his depositions before the coroner.

He knows the whole story, and has been paid to keep a still tongue."

"There I entirely agree with you," Trendall declared quickly; while at that moment the secretary returned with a slip of paper attached to the query which his chief had written. "Ah!" he exclaimed, glancing at the paper, "I see that the fellow Barker, who was a chauffeur before he entered Harry's service, has set up a motor-car business in Southampton."

"You believe him to have been an accessory, eh?"

"Yes, a dupe in the hands of a clever woman."

"Of what woman?" asked Walter, holding his breath.