“Oh, I am so glad. And now I can tell you a secret. I wasn’t absolutely sure my stepfather had told us the truth. At least, I was sure; but I couldn’t help having a doubt every now and then. And I simply couldn’t bear the thought that he might have been implicated. I knew, of course, that he hadn’t killed any one; but I wasn’t quite sure he didn’t know all about it. And everybody else seemed to believe the worst, and at times I couldn’t help being a little shaken. Now you must tell me all about what you’ve found out.”
Ellery did tell her all about it, and also of the steps he had taken to arrange a meeting at Thomas’s office for the following morning. Joan said at once that she would go; and Ellery thereupon rang up Thomas, to whom he had so far said nothing, at his home, and demanded an interview. Joan and he must, he said, see Thomas on urgent business. They would be bringing several witnesses who could throw valuable light on the case, and they would be at his office at 10.30 on the following morning. Would Thomas be sure to keep the time free?
Thomas was plainly surprised, and also curious; and he tried to make Ellery tell him over the ’phone what it was all about. This Ellery would not do, merely saying that the matter was of vital importance, but he would rather explain it all in the morning. Thomas thereupon agreed to cancel a previous engagement, and to be ready for them at the hour arranged. “Now, at last,” said Ellery, as he hung up the receiver, “I think we are entitled to a good night’s rest.”
“I’m afraid there won’t be much sleep for me, darling,” said Joan. “Sir Vernon was told to-day about poor George. He kept asking for him, and in the end Marian had to tell him all about it. Of course it has made him worse. Now, he keeps asking to see the police, and insisting that they must find the murderers. But he knows nothing at all about it—he has no idea who did it. Some one must be with him all the time, of course. Mary is with him now, and I have to take her place at midnight. She is tired out, poor thing.”
“And what about you, poor thing?” said Ellery; for he could see that she was almost at the end of her strength. He drew her head down on to his shoulder, and tried to persuade her to give up the idea of coming to Thomas’s office in the morning. But Joan was firm: she must see the thing through. She would be all right: she could get plenty of sleep later in the day. Ellery had to consent to her coming, and the lovers sat together till midnight, when they bade each other farewell, as lovers do, for all the world as if their parting were, not for a few hours, but for an eternity.
It was getting on for one o’clock when Ellery reached home; and he was surprised as he went up the steps, to see a light in his sitting-room. He let himself in with his key, and found his landlady sitting bolt upright on the hall chair. “Lord, Mr. Ellery,” she said, “how late you are. There’s a person in your room been waiting for you more than an hour. I wouldn’t go to bed with him there—not for worlds, I wouldn’t. He said he must see you, and would wait.”
“What sort of a man?”
“Oh, not a nice man. He looks to me more like a tramp, sir, than anything else. I was afraid he might steal something if I left him.”
Ellery opened the door and went in. He at once recognised the man who had followed Walter Brooklyn on Tuesday from Trafalgar Square to Jermyn Street—one of the witnesses whom “the Spaniard” had found. The visitor lost no time.
“Look ’ere, mister,” he said, “it’s off.”