Some one knocked at the door. The handle turned and an erect man with his right arm carried in a black silk handkerchief improvised into a sling entered the room. It was Detective-Inspector Waverley.

CHAPTER XVIII

Heldon Foyle was on his feet in a second, and he pushed a chair towards his subordinate. Detective-Inspector Waverley sat down and drummed nervously on his knees with the fingers of his left hand.

"Well, you've got back," said the superintendent in a non-committal tone. "We were beginning to wonder what had happened to you. I hope that arm of yours is not badly hurt. What has been the trouble?"

The inspector winced and sat bolt upright in his chair.

"I guess I was to blame, sir," he said. "I fell into a trap like a new-joined cabbage-boy. This man, Ivan Abramovitch, must have known that he was followed by a couple of us, so he threw off Taylor, who was with me, very simply, by going into a big outfitter's place in the City. I dodged round to a second entrance and, sure enough, he came out there. I couldn't get word to Taylor, so I picked him up, and a pretty dance he led me through a maze of alleys up the side of Petticoat Lane and round about by the Whitechapel Road. You will know the sort of neighbourhood it is there. Well, I suppose I must have got a bit careless, for in taking a narrow twist in one of those alleys some one dropped on me from behind. I hit out and yelled, but I didn't get a second chance, for my head was b.u.mped hard down on the pavement and I went to sleep for good and plenty. There were a couple of men in it, for I could hear 'em talking before I became properly unconscious. They dragged me along, linking their arms in mine, and we got into a cab. I guess the driver thought I was drunk, and that they were my pals helping me home.

"When I came round my head was bandaged up, and I was in quite a decent little room, lying on a couch, with Mr. Ivan Abramovitch sitting opposite to me. I couldn't give a guess where it was, for the window only looked out on a blank wall. I sat up, and he grinned at me.

"'I am a police officer,' I said. 'How did I get here?'

"'I brought you,' he says with a grin. 'You were taking too great an interest in my doings for my liking. Now I am going to take an interest in yours.'

"At that I jumped for him and got a knife through my arm for my pains.

After he'd sworn at me like a trooper in English, French, and Russian for about ten minutes he bandaged up the cut with his handkerchief, and told me if I made any more fuss I was in for trouble. Some one knocked at the door, but he ordered them off.

"'You won't get away from here alive without permission if I can help it,' he said; 'but if you do, you won't be able to identify any one but myself. If you take it coolly there'll be no harm come to you.'

"I tried to bluff a bit, but he just laughed. And then I stayed with him in the same room up to within an hour or two ago, when some one came into the house and he was summoned outside the door. They had an excited pow-wow, and I could hear a woman talking. Finally, the man came back and told me they'd determined to let me go. He put a handkerchief over my eyes, and after a while I was taken down into what I thought was a taxicab. I was turned out a quarter of an hour ago at the Blackfriars end of the Embankment."

Foyle was by now striding up and down the office, his hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets. He paused long enough to blow down a speaking-tube and put a quick question.

"What was the number of the cab?"

"It had no police number. Its index mark was A.A. 4796."

The superintendent drew from his pocket a little black book, such as is carried by every police officer in London. On the outside was inscribed in white letters: "Metropolitan Police. Pocket Directory." He turned over the pages until he found what he wanted. A messenger had pushed open the door.

"Southampton registration," said the superintendent. "Johns, get through on the 'phone to the Southampton police, and ask 'em to trace the owner of this car the moment the county council offices open."

The messenger disappeared, and he turned on Waverley.

"The number's probably a false one--a board slipped over the real number, as they did in the Dalston case when some American toughs went through that jeweller a month or two back. We might as well look into it, though. These people are wily customers, or they wouldn't have kept you from seeing the rest of the gang. They tried to frighten us by threatening to make away with you. I think it likely that they found it rather a nuisance to look after you--especially when Green and I tumbled on to some of their people an hour ago. You haven't exactly covered yourself with glory, Waverley, but under the circ.u.mstances I shall take no disciplinary action. Now go and write out a full report, and then go home. The police surgeon will recommend what leave of absence you want to get over the stab in the arm. Good night--or rather, good morning."

"Thank you, sir. Good morning, sir."

Foyle never forgot discipline, which is as necessary, or more necessary within limits, in a detective service as in any other specialised business. To have sympathised with Waverley would have been bad policy.

He had been made to feel that he had blundered in some way, and the feeling with which he had entered the room, that he was a martyr to duty, had vanished in the conviction that he was simply a fool.

Foyle lit a cigar and fell into a reverie that lasted perhaps ten minutes. He was glad that Waverley was safe, but a little disgusted that he had failed to baffle the precautions taken while he was a prisoner, and so have learnt something that might have been of value in the investigations. Presently he lifted the telephone receiver and ordered a taxicab from the all-night rank in Trafalgar Square. In a little while he was being whirled homeward.

Not till midday next day did he arrive at the Yard. A slip of paper was lying on his desk--the record of a telephone message from the Southampton police. It read--

"Halford, Chief Constable, Southampton, to Foyle, C.I.D., London.

"Car No. A.A. 4796 belongs to Mr. J. Price, The Grange, Lyndhurst.

Mr. Price is an old resident in the neighbourhood and a man of means. The car is a six-cylinder Napier."

"As I thought," commented Heldon Foyle thoughtfully, tearing the paper into little bits and dropping them into the waste-paper basket. "The number was a false one. They knew that Waverley would have a look at the number. Oh, these people are cunning--cunning."

Green found him, half an hour later, hard at work with the collection of typewritten sheets which formed the book of the case. Foyle was still juggling with his jig-saw puzzle, trying to fit fresh facts in their proper position to old facts.

"Well?" asked the superintendent abruptly.

Green read from a paper in his hand.

"Taylor, who is watching the Duke of Burghley's House in Berkeley Square, has just telephoned that a woman who corresponds to the description of Lola Rachael has just been admitted and is still there."

Into Foyle's alert eyes there shot a gleam of interest.

"You don't say so?" he muttered. And then, more alertly, "Is he still on the telephone? If so, tell him to detain her should she come out before I can get down. He must be as courteous as possible. We mustn't lose her now. And send a man down at once to bring Wills, the butler at Grosvenor Gardens, here. He's the only man who saw the veiled woman enter the house on the night of the murder."

CHAPTER XIX

From behind the curtains of the sitting-room Eileen Meredith could see two men occasionally pa.s.s and re-pa.s.s the house. They did not go by often, but she knew that even if she could not see them they always held the house in view. They were not journalists--they were more sedate, older men. Nor did they molest any one who entered or left the house.

They merely exercised a quiet, unwearying, un.o.btrusive surveillance, and Eileen knew that Heldon Foyle had taken his own way of preventing her from seeing Sir Ralph Fairfield. She felt certain that were she to leave the house the men would follow her. She did not guess, however, that Foyle had intended them to give her an opportunity of discovering their presence. She would be the more unlikely to persist in her rash resolve if she knew it would be frustrated. Nor did she know that Fairfield was equally closely watched in all his comings and goings.

The hysterical outbreak that had been provoked by the superintendent's penetration of her doings when she had visited his office at Scotland Yard had been followed by hours of almost complete collapse. To her father enough had been told to make him hurriedly summon a specialist.

The doctor explained.

"I have known similar cases follow a great shock. She is mentally unbalanced on one point. Unless anything occurs to excite her in connection with that, time will effect a cure. She must not be opposed in her wishes, and I would suggest that she be taken out of London and an effort made to distract her. Plenty of society, outdoor amus.e.m.e.nts--anything to occupy her mind."

"I suggested that we should leave London," said Lord Burghley gloomily.

"She refuses."

"Then don't press her. Ask her friends to visit her, and don't let her leave the house except with a competent attendant."

So it was that Eileen found herself practically a prisoner in her own home. She received the visitors invited by her father at first with a mechanical courtesy, but later on with an a.s.sumption of cheerfulness that deceived her father and even to more extent the doctor. She had begun to realise that she would never shake off the vigilance which surrounded her until she had convinced folk that she had regained her normal spirits. Her capabilities as an actress, which had won for her leading parts in many amateur plays, had never been taxed so hardly. But then she had invariably been cast for comedy. Now she felt she was playing tragedy. For night and day she never forgot. Always there was one thought hammering at her brain.

She withdrew into the room as a neat little motor-brougham halted at the door. In a little while Mrs. Porter-Strangeways was announced.

Reluctantly Eileen condescended to welcome the portly, middle-aged dame who was tacitly recognised as being the leader of American society in London. The girl smiled brightly as the woman rose to greet her with both arms outstretched.

"It is so good of you, dear Mrs. Porter-Strangeways," she exclaimed. "I have only my friends to look forward to now."

Mrs. Porter-Strangeways indicated her companion by some subtle means of her own.

"You poor girl!" she exclaimed, throwing just the right reflection of sympathy into her not unmusical voice. "I called before, but you were unfit to see any one then. I took the liberty of bringing a friend to see you--the Princess Petrovska."