I did indeed remember, and I prayed that I should have pluck and courage not to fail. But it was a very hard thing that he had asked me to do, and he had said well in saying that he would not ask it of me if it did not mean more than his life.
The words he had whispered so hastily and unexpectedly in Spanish, were these: “Go to the room of the murder alone, and on the window balcony find in a box under flower-pots a folded document. Take this to Maxine. Every moment counts.”
So it seemed that it was always of her he thought—of Maxine de Renzie! And I, of all people in the world, was to help him, with her.
As I thought of this task he’d set me, and of all it meant, it appeared more and more incredible that he should have had the heart to ask such a thing of me. But—it “meant more than his life.” And I would do the thing, if it could be done, because of my pride.
As I drove away from the prison a kind of fury grew in me and possessed me. I felt as if I had fire instead of blood in my veins. If I had known that death, or worse than death, waited for me in the ghastly house to which Ivor had sent me, I would still have gone there.
My first thought was to go instantly, and get it over—with success or failure. But calmer thoughts prevailed.
I hadn’t looked at the papers yet. My only knowledge of last night’s dreadful happenings had come from Uncle Eric and Lord Robert West. I had said to myself that I didn’t wish to read the newspaper accounts of the murder, and of Ivor’s supposed part in it. I remembered now, however, that I did not even know in what part of Paris the house of the murder was. I recalled only the name of the street, because it was a curiously grim one—like the tragedy that had been acted in it.
I couldn’t tell the chaffeur to drive me to the street and house. That would be a stupid thing to do. I must search the papers, and find out from them something about the neighbourhood, for there would surely be plenty of details of that sort. And I must do this without first going back to the hotel, as it might be very difficult to get away again, once I was there. Now, nobody knew where I was, and I was free to do as I pleased, no matter what the consequences might be afterwards.
Passing a Duval restaurant, I suddenly ordered my motor-cab to stop. Having paid, and sent it away, I went upstairs and asked for a cup of chocolate at one of the little, deadly respectable-looking marble tables. Also I asked to see an evening paper.
It was a shock to find Ivor’s photograph, horribly reproduced, gazing at me from the front page. The photograph was an old one, which had been a good deal shown in shop windows, much to Ivor’s disgust, at about the time when he returned from his great expedition and published his really wonderful book. I had seen it before I met him, and as it must have been on sale in Paris as well as London, it had been easy enough for the newspaper people to get it. Then there came the story of the murder, built up dramatically. Hating it, sickened by it, I yet read it all. I knew where to go to find the house, and I knew that the murder had been committed in a back room on the top floor. Also I saw the picture of the window with the balcony. Ivor was supposed—according to Girard, the detective—to have tried in vain to escape by way of this high balcony, on hearing sounds outside the door while busy in searching the dead man’s room. Girard said that he had seen him first, by the light of a bull’s-eye lantern, which he—Girard—carried, standing at bay in the open window. There was a photograph of this window, taken from outside. There was the balcony: and there was the balcony of another window with another balcony just like it, on the adjoining house. I looked at the picture, and judged that there would not be more than two feet of distance between the railings of those two balconies.