“Now, my boy, to establish the connection that would bring a man of Swanson’s position to a rendezvous at the Palace, to arouse the slumbering demon in this human orang-utang. It’s rather a commentary on that hoary police doctrine that a dope fiend never commits murder. I was right.”
Within thirty minutes Chief Leslie and Brady, and Wilson, his right-hand men, were in the room, and Lanagan swiftly detailed the circumstances. Thorne had come to and was shaking and shivering as the drug wore out of his system, leaving him nerve-racked. He did not attempt to repudiate his utterance, but sullenly admitted the murder.
In view of the words overheard by See Wong, there was but one person to clear up the mystery. Leslie, Lanagan and I hurried in the chief’s machine to the Swanson home, nearly midnight as it was. That they had had Thorne once under examination and had permitted him to go was a source of bitter chagrin to the chief. Thorne showed none of the ravages of the habit that men of weaker physique exhibited; the day the police picked him up he had happened to be comparatively normal, and consequently he had passed safely through the quiz.
Mrs. Swanson had not yet retired, and, upon learning that the chief was one of her late callers, summoned us at once to the drawing-room. She had one of those splendid faces seen occasionally in the aged, where strength of mind or religious fervour has brought endurance of lifelong secret pain of body or soul. The calmness of a noble resignation looked forth in a slight clouding of her clear eyes and expressed itself in the faint traces of suppression about her mobile lips. The gleaming, snow-white hair, combed straight back from a forehead of a remarkable breadth in a woman, invested her like an aureole.
She was a woman probably of sixty years.
“You will appreciate, gentlemen, I trust,” she said in a low voice of refined modulation, “that I have endured much and am still suffering.”
“It is a very painful errand we are on, Mrs. Swanson, and we will endeavour to be brief,” said Lanagan in a voice that a Chesterfield might have envied for courteous inflection and gentleness of expression, “but nevertheless it is an errand that must be performed.” He glanced at the chief, who nodded.
“Speaking as a newspaper man,” continued Lanagan, “it is my wish at all times to spare the feelings of those, particularly women, with whom I am brought into relation. But the true newspaper man is a seeker after truth, and he must follow as definite a path as the police follow.”
There was an eloquent pause. She gazed from one to the other during the interim, as though striving to read their thoughts. It was evident that the undercurrent that these skilled cross-examiners intended to convey had carried home.
“Well?” finally. Neither Lanagan nor Leslie spoke. There was another pause. She said at last: “You have some information to impart to me? Or some information to seek?”