"What is that?" asked Miss Baird, opening her eyes.
"Well, the errand you wanted me to execute raised my curiosity to fever heat. I felt that I could not rest until I had learned the name of Jerce's consumptive patient, especially when I remembered that he was one of the Purple Fern triumvirate. Next morning, I had no duties to attend to, so I handed Ferdy over to an Irish chap, who would amuse him and keep an eye on him, and then bunked off to London by the ten o'clock train."
"You did not come up to see what I was doing?" asked Clarice, in a suspicious manner.
"No. I did not even know that you were in London," replied Anthony, rather wounded by her doubts, "and in any case, as I intended to trust you, I should not have spied upon you."
"I ask your pardon, dear," and she kissed him.
Ackworth accepted the delightful apology, and continued. "I went down to Whitechapel, and had a deuce of a hunt to find Tea Street. But I came across a kind of Sister of Mercy, who knew all about Jerce and his philanthropic missions. Jerce has a surgery in Tea Street, and goes there twice a week, usually at night. Sister Anne--so she told me she was called, and it reminded me of Bluebeard--showed me where the consumptive young man had lived. The police had been there, after Jerce had communicated that letter to Scotland Yard."
"What letter?"
"The one given by the dying man to Jerce, warning him that he might be attacked by Osip. If you remember, the sick chap confessed that he was one of the members of the triumvirate. According to Sister Anne, this young man was called Felix Exton, but the police found stray letters in his rooms which showed that he was really Frank Clarke, the son of the vicar."
Clarice nodded. "And I expect the police came down and told Mr. Clarke about the discovery. Poor man, no wonder he suffers so terribly, and will not allow his son's name to be mentioned. That miserable Frank--and yet I remember him a handsome, bright young man."
"He was a bad lot," said Ackworth, emphatically. "I scarcely blame a man for striking a blow in hot blood, but to murder in such cold-blooded ways as those adopted by the Purple Fern gang is too terrible to think of. And now that we know Frank Clarke was an assassin, it would seem as if the instinct to murder was hereditary."