The Mystery of the Four Fingers

by Fred M. White

"I don't think you are very far wrong," Gurdon said, "but I am still puzzled about the house in Portsmouth Square."

"Which house do you mean?" Venner asked.

"The one in which my adventure took place. The house from which the furniture vanished so mysteriously."

"That seems to me capable of an easy explanation," Venner replied. "There is no doubt that the man called Bates and the cripple are one and the same person. You must admit that."

"Yes, I admit that freely enough. Go on."

"Well, this Bates, as we will call him, has a large establishment at 75, Portsmouth Square. The house next door was empty, possibly it belonged to Mr. Bates. He had a whim for furnishing a room or two in an empty house, or perhaps there was some more sinister purpose behind it. Anyway, after you had blundered on the place and had taken your life in your hands, it became necessary for the man to disappear from No. 74. Therefore, he had that furniture removed at once. I daresay if we investigated the house carefully we should find that there was some means of communication between the two; at least, that is the only explanation I can think of."

"You've got it," Gurdon cried. "I'll wager any money, you are right. But I am sorry the man has vanished in this mysterious way, because it checks our investigations at the very outset. The last thing you wanted in this matter was police interference. Now the whole thing has got into the papers, and the public are sure to take the matter up. It is the very class of mystery that the cheap press loves to dwell upon. It has all the attributes of the cause celebre. Here is a handsome man, picturesque looking, a cripple into the bargain, a man leading an absolutely secluded life, and the very last person in the world one would expect to have enemies. He is very rich, too, and lives in one of the finest houses in the West End of London. He disappears in the most mysterious manner. Unless I am greatly mistaken, within the next two or three days London will be disclosing this matter and the newspapers will be full of it."

"I am afraid you are right," Venner admitted; "but I don't see how we are going to gain any thing by telling the police what we have found out. As you know, I investigated this matter solely in the interests of the woman I love, and with the one intention of freeing her life from the cloud that hangs over it. In any other circumstances I would go direct to Scotland Yard and tell them everything we know. But not now. I think you will agree with me that we should go our own way and say nothing to anybody about our discovery."

The events of the next day or so fully verified the fears of the two friends. The Bates case appealed powerfully to the large section of the public who delight in crimes of the mysterious order. Within a couple of days most of the papers were devoting much space to the problem. It so happened, too, that the week was an exceedingly barren one from a news point of view; therefore, the Bates case had the place of honor. There was absolutely no fresh information, not a single line that pointed to a definite solution of the problem. Indeed, the ingenious way in which most of the papers contrived to fill some three columns a day was beyond all praise. But both Gurdon and Venner searched in vain for a scrap of information that threw any light on the identity of the missing man. His habits were described at some length, a tolerably accurate description of his household appeared in several quarters; but nothing very much beyond that. The missing man's servants were exceedingly reticent, and if they knew anything whatever about their master they had preferred to confide it to the police in preference to the inquisitive reporter. Not a single relative turned up, though it was generally understood that the missing man was possessed of considerable property.

It was on the third day that Venner began to see daylight. One of the evening papers had come out with a startling letter which seemed to point to a clue, though it conveyed nothing to the police. Venner came round to Gurdon's rooms with a copy of the evening paper in his hand. He laid it before his friend and asked him to read the letter, which, though it contained but a few lines, was of absorbing interest to both of them.