"These are puzzles, are they not?"

"You have certainly given me something to think over. Have you anything more to tell me about this workman?"

"No; our informant did not see him again."

Gilbert now resumed the thread of his narrative, telling the inspector all that took place when he and his father went to Silwood's chambers.

The inspector, as Gilbert proceeded, compared his statement with the report made by the policeman who had been summoned by the porter.

"What you tell me," said Gale, when Gilbert had finished, "bears out exactly what my subordinate has set forth. The coroner has been sent for, and we must wait till we hear from him. I shall accompany him when he makes his examination of the body, and I expect a message from him every minute."

"Will you let me go with you?" asked Gilbert. "You must remember that I am engaged to Mr. Thornton's daughter, and so am, therefore, in a measure her representative."

"I have not forgotten that, and I do not know that there is any objection. If you will tell me where I can find you, I'll let you know.

I must send you away just now, for I wish to be alone to think--and there is a great deal to think of."

"Very well. I'll stay in the waiting-room outside," and Gilbert left the inspector to his thoughts.

CHAPTER XV

"As strange a case as any I ever heard of," said Inspector Gale to himself, after Gilbert had withdrawn. "Now, what do I know about it exactly? Let me see."

Gale was a shrewd man, with an abundance of sound common sense and an extensive experience in criminal matters. He also had a certain degree of imagination, which is the quality the ordinary detective lacks.

From a cabinet he took some sheets of blue paper which were fastened together; they were the memoranda he had made of the facts connected with the disappearance of Morris Thornton. Gale read them over rapidly but carefully. Putting them down on his desk, he reflected.

"Morris Thornton, a rich colonial," he thought, "came to London on July 29th, and put up at the Law Courts Hotel in Holborn. Late in the evening of the next day, July 30th, he left the hotel for a walk in Holborn or perhaps in Chancery Lane--so he said to the porter. To-day, August 14th, his body is found in a room at the top of a house in Stone Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, that is, on the Chancery Lane side of the Inn. That looks as if he had carried out his intention of taking a stroll in Chancery Lane. This fits in well enough. What next?

"How did he get up to the room at that time of night? The Inn would be closed; the night porter of the Inn must have let him in. I must make a note of that. And what took him there? He must have had some object in view. And the room was in the set of chambers occupied by Mr. Cooper Silwood, one of the most respectable solicitors in London, and a member of the very firm of solicitors with whom Mr. Thornton transacted his business. Could it be that Mr. Thornton had gone to see Mr. Silwood about some matter? But surely not at that hour--it hardly seems possible. Still I must not neglect that phase of the case.

"As regards Mr. Silwood. As he is now dead, the thing looks like leading up to a blind wall. He had been for some time away on a holiday. I must get the date when he left London. If he was in London on July 30th, or on the next day, the case would appear pretty black for him. Then there is the locked door. The door of the room in which the body was found had a special lock, and of course a special key, which Mr. Silwood carried.

Some one locked the door on the dead man; the only one, presumably, who had the key to lock it was Mr. Silwood. This also looks pretty black for him.

"But the motive? Suppose Silwood did kill Morris Thornton, what would be his reason? It must have been some very strong reason indeed that would make a respectable solicitor murder an important client. Most improbable--impossible, one would have said; but nothing is impossible, nothing in the world. Yet everything points to the deed having been done by Silwood. The conclusion is obvious."

At this point in his reflections Gale took a turn up and down the floor.

He was saying to himself, as he had said to Gilbert, that when a conclusion was obvious, then it was necessary to beware of it. His long experience had taught him that obvious conclusions rarely turned out to be correct.

"Well, where are we?" Gale mused, sitting down again. "Let us say Silwood had a motive for murdering Thornton, and did actually kill him, and having committed the murder, fled the country on the pretence of taking a holiday--suppose all this; where does it land us?"

Here a curious idea came into Gale's mind. He considered it doubtfully for two or three minutes; then, reminding himself of his favourite theory that nothing was impossible, he gave it tentatively a place in his thoughts.

"Suppose," he said to himself, "that Silwood is not dead, and that all this palaver about the certificate of death from the Italian magistrate is a skilfully manufactured affair, a mere pretence, in fact, with the object of defeating justice? If this were so, it would complete the case with a vengeance. Still, why shouldn't Silwood be dead? Well, I must look into it, though the idea that he is alive seems rather far-fetched."

Far-fetched or not, the idea fascinated the inspector as it appealed to his imagination; it haunted him so that he could not drive it out of his mind.

"Suppose," he kept saying to himself over and over again, "Silwood is not dead. If he is not dead, what does that imply? Does it mean that there is some conspiracy, a conspiracy in which the Eversleighs are involved?"

Gale pondered deeply. He had the feeling that somehow he was on the verge of a great discovery; but, as he thought still further, he was not so sure. It seemed absurd to connect the Eversleighs with anything of the sort. Finally, he came to a decision. Rising from his chair, he pressed an electric bell, and told a man who instantly appeared in answer to his call to ask Mr. Gilbert Eversleigh to step into the room.

Gilbert, expecting that the coroner had been heard from, came in eagerly.

"The coroner?" he asked.

"No, Mr. Gilbert. I wished you to tell me again the name of the place in Italy where Mr. Silwood died."

"Camajore, in the province of Tuscany--it is in the north of Italy, on the west coast or a few miles inland."

"Camajore?" repeated Gale. "How is it spelt?"

Gilbert spelt the word.

"Do you know the place?" asked the officer.

"Not at all."

"Do you happen to know the best and quickest way of getting to it?"

"You would take the train for Genoa, I fancy. Camajore is only a short distance from Genoa. But why do you ask me this?"

"It will be necessary, I think, for us to have the death of Mr. Silwood confirmed."

"I understand," said Gilbert, but he had only a glimmering of the inspector's meaning. "It will be as well--as a matter of form."

"Quite so," said Gale. "All sorts of inquiries will be made, and we must be in a position to answer them. By the way, Mr. Gilbert, would you mind telling me if Mr. Silwood was on terms of intimacy with Mr.

Thornton--would you say that Mr. Silwood was as much of a friend of Mr.

Thornton as your father was?"

"Mr. Thornton certainly knew Mr. Silwood very well, though perhaps he was hardly on the same terms of intimate friendship as my father was."

"Still there was a considerable acquaintance?"

"Undoubtedly."

"Do you think Mr. Thornton knew Mr. Silwood well enough to go to the latter's rooms at midnight or thereabouts?"

"I should scarcely have thought so. It's rather an extreme thing to go to a man's rooms at that time of night."

"But if there was some pressing reason?"

"Of course, necessity knows no law, but I can't suppose for one instant there was such a necessity. I believe that Mr. Thornton's relations with both Mr. Silwood and my father were of the most cordial character; indeed, I am certain they were. There was absolutely no hint of anything else. I know that for many years past Mr. Thornton reposed the greatest confidence in my father's firm."

"So I understand," a.s.sented Gale. "Now, Mr. Gilbert, I must ask you to leave me. I shall tell you the instant I hear from the coroner."

And Gilbert went out once more.