"Because the man who has that cross tattooed on his left arm was the disguised negro; he was the man who killed Sir Gregory."
"Ah Heavens! Oh, Edward Hersham?" moaned Mrs. Boazoph, and fell upon the floor in a faint.
[CHAPTER XXIII].
THE CONFESSION OF HERSHAM.
When Fanks saw Mrs. Boazoph lying at his feet his first intention was to wait until she recovered. Later on he changed his mind, and when he had placed her in the hands of the servant he went home full of thought and dark surmises. It seemed to him that the case was centring in Ted Hersham; that the whole situation depended on the right reading of the tattooed cross riddle. Mrs. Boazoph knew something about the cross, she knew something about Hersham; but what it was Fanks could by no means make up his mind. It seemed to him that in exploring the depths of Mrs. Boazoph's mind he had found a still lower deep; and he was puzzled what to think.
"Confound the woman," he thought, meditating over a pipe; "I said that we should find her at the end of the path which leads to the discovery of the mystery, and it seems that I was right. She screened Binjoy for some reason which I cannot discover; she will now attempt to save Hersham, lest he should fall into my clutches. Why should she take all this trouble for those two men? And what does she know about the tattooed cross? Does Binjoy know about it also? And was it he who made the obliterating mark? I can't think Hersham guilty, and yet things look black against him. But no," said Fanks, rising, "the disguised man who slew in Tooley's Alley and Hersham are two different people; I proved that conclusively to Garth. What's to be done now?"
It was difficult to decide. At first he almost resolved to return to Mrs. Boazoph and urge her confession; again, he thought it best to wait until he heard what Hersham had to say. It might be, he thought, that Hersham's confession would throw some light on his relation to Mrs. Boazoph. The hints of Anne Colmer, the terror of Hersham, the fainting of Mrs. Boazoph were all of a piece, and Fanks felt confident that beneath these perplexities lay the key to the riddle. It was not that he had no clue; he was in reality quite bewildered by the multiplicity of clues, so bewildered that he did not know which clue to seize first. At length he came to the conclusion that it would be best to wait till he saw Hersham and heard what he had to say, and afterwards to follow up the clue placed in his hands by the fainting of Mrs. Boazoph.
"I'll write to Hersham, and remind him that he promised to see me in a few days and tell the truth." said Fanks, going to his desk; "and if he reveals all I am certain that his confession will contain the information that Mrs. Boazoph wrote and warned him against me."
He was confident, as he said, that she would do this. If she tried to save Binjoy, she would certainly try to help Hersham; but her reason for doing the one was as inscrutable as her reason had been for acting in the way she did towards Binjoy. The further he went into the case the darker it grew; and in sheer despair Fanks wrote his reminder to Hersham, and did nothing more for the next few days but meditate over the tangle in which he found himself involved. His meditations led to no result, and when Hersham called on him at the Duke Street chambers in three days, the detective was at his wit's end how to proceed.
However, he was delighted to see Hersham, as he had doubted whether the young man would fulfil his promise. Now that he had come to do so there might be some chance of seeing a gleam of light. Fanks did not tell the journalist what he had discovered concerning his movements on the night of the twenty-first, as he wanted to see if Hersham would confess as much. If he did so, such frankness would confirm his belief that the young fellow had nothing to do with the commission of the crime. If, on the other hand, Hersham concealed the proven facts Fanks intended to force him into confession by revealing what he had heard from Berry Jawkins. By the result he would be guided in his future movements. The ensuing conversation was likely to prove as interesting and important as that which he had held with Mrs. Boazoph.