I resolved to hold my tongue for the future. I would make no more attempts to sound Sir Frank, and would trust to his respect for professional secrecy to protect me from any awkward questions from him. The resolution was easier to take than to keep.
As soon as lunch was over the consultant led the way upstairs to his study. It appeared that the autopsy was to be postponed; the first business was to be the examination of the books that Madame Bonnell had been so unwilling to give up.
The physician seated himself at his massive bureau, a combination of desk and cabinet, and drew the volume labelled “Members” in front of him, while I placed myself respectfully on a chair at the side.
“The list of members isn’t a very large one,” was his first observation. “One could hardly expect it to be. The Domino Club has more the character of a secret society than a club; a society for the pursuit of illicit pleasures, let us say. Whom have we here?” He opened the book as he spoke, and ran his eye slowly down the first page. “The Duke of Altringham—I am not surprised at seeing his name; General Sir Francis Uppingham, K.C.B.; the Countess of Eardisley; Honourable Janet Wilbraham; Mrs. Worboise; Sir George Castleton, Bart.—h’m, we are beginning to come across some of the names in the appointment-book, but I don’t see anything to account for the numbers attached to them. And I shall be very much surprised if those numbers don’t contain the true key to the mystery.”
He paused in reflection, and took Weathered’s diary from his pocket. “The first thing, it seems to me, is to make out a list of the members who were also patients, and to underline the names of those who had a number as well. It is among them that we may expect to find Zenobia and Salome and possibly the Leopardess as well, though her behaviour suggests that she can hardly have been a patient. She may have been one formerly.”
I listened anxiously. Every moment I was expecting the name which I foresaw too surely would be found in the final list of suspects. Suddenly Tarleton turned to me with an unexpected order.
“While I am comparing these two books you can go through the Visitors’-book It may interest you to find the entry of your own name.”
I could not tell whether my dismay was visible to the gray eyes that seemed to look at me with such perfect indifference. My dilemma was truly critical. I knew, of course, that my name did not appear in the volume I was required to search. And if I pretended to look for it I should land myself in a series of traps. My chief would want some explanation of its absence; and what explanation could I give? If I said that I had been present under a false name he would naturally expect me to tell him that name. And he would expect me to tell him at once, before I opened the book and began the mock search. I had barely a second in which to make up my mind. If only my own reputation, or even my own life, had been at stake, I think I should have thrown myself on his mercy, and come out with the whole truth. But I was held as in an iron vice. The knowledge that the police were actively engaged in tracing the purchasers of the costumes which had been described to us by Gerard haunted my consciousness. I was driven in despair to tell my first direct falsehood to my chief.
I opened the volume hurriedly as I spoke.
“I don’t think I shall find my own name here.”