Happily Jacques had gone home, or the news editor would have exploded at the meagre details with which Tab supplied his newspaper that night.
He reached home at half-past eleven with a queer little ache at his heart. What was Ursula Ardfern’s secret? Why the mystery? Why must her mystery be interwoven with the greater and the more sordid mystery of the old man’s death?
As he pushed open the door he saw a telegram in the box which was common to the whole of the flats, once the entrance door was closed. It was for him and he tore open the envelope and unfolded its flimsy contents. It was handed in at Naples and was from Rex.
“Going on to Egypt. Quite recovered. Shall be back in a month.”
He smiled to himself and hoped that “quite recovered” referred to his youthful infatuation as well as his disordered nerves. He paused outside the door of his flat to find his key and as he did so, he thought he heard a sound. It may have come from one of the flats above, but he did not give it any importance, and inserting the key, he caught a momentary flash of light through the transom of his sitting-room. It was as if at the second he had opened the door the lights in the sitting-room had been extinguished.
It must have been an optical delusion, he thought, but the memory of the burglar came to him as he closed the door slowly behind him. For a second he hesitated, and then pushed open the closed door of the sitting-room. The first thing he noticed was that all the blinds were down, and he had left them up. He heard the sound of heavy breathing.
“Who’s there?” he asked and then reached out his hand for the switch.
Before his fingers could close upon the lever something struck him. He felt no pain, was conscious only of a terrific shock that brought him to his knees, incapable of thought or movement. Somebody pushed past him in the darkness. There was a slam of the flat door, a quick patter of feet on the stairs, and the street-door slammed.
Still Tab remained on his hands and knees, held there by his own invincible will. There was a trickle of warm blood running over his forehead and into the corner of his eye and the subsequent smart of it brought him at last to his senses. He got unsteadily to his feet and put on the lights.
It was a chair that had struck him; it lay overturned near the door. Tab felt gingerly at his forehead and then went in search of a mirror. The injury was a very slight one, the wound being superficial. He guessed that the chair must have caught against the wall and eased the blow, for one of the legs was broken and there was a long scratch on the wall. Mechanically he bathed his face, put a rough dressing on his forehead and then went back to the sitting-room to get a better idea of the confusion which reigned there, than he had been able to appreciate at first. Every drawer in his desk had been emptied. One which he kept locked and which contained his more private papers, had been forcibly broken open and the contents were scattered, some on the floor, a few on the desk. A little bureau by the wall had been treated with the same lack of courtesy and the floor was littered with its contents.