Tarleton glanced at me before answering, and I remembered his prediction to Lord Ledbury as he spoke.
“What, have they got to work already? What does it say?”
Captain Charles read out from the paper in a round, commanding voice:
“Dr. Weathered, deceased. Any patients of the late Dr. Weathered desiring to have their letters to him returned are requested to apply, mentioning number, to Messrs. James, Halliday and James, Solicitors, Carmichael House, Chancery Lane, E.C.4.” He did not spare us even the 4.
Sir Frank nodded approvingly. “Very well worded, very well worded, indeed. It sounds like a perfectly respectable offer.”
It sounded so to me. But the Inspector was puzzled.
“What does it mean?” he exclaimed. “Why should they advertise? Why not return the letters at once, or write to the patients? And why should they want to know the exact numbers?”
“Ah, that is part of the case that I haven’t had an opportunity of going into with you yet, Charles. Won’t you sit down. The fact is, I have been rather expecting some approach of this kind. Dr. Cassilis and I have ascertained that Weathered induced some of his patients to write him letters of a rather compromising kind. The arrangement was that the letters should be signed with a number instead of a name, probably they bore no address. The object of this advertisement is to find out who the writers are. The demand for money will come later.”
“Blackmail!” the Inspector gasped in horror.
“I’m afraid so. An honest person who had found such a correspondence would have burnt it. You see now one of my reasons for not dropping the case to oblige that Crown Prince of Slavonia.”