He was seated in the servants’ parlour, white and shaken-looking. Was he sure that the thing was the head of his master? Yes, only it looked brown and to have been dead a long time. He was almost sure that the thing was his master’s head.
Freyberger stood, with his eyes fixed upon the pattern of the drugget carpet, lost in thought.
The case had suddenly, and at a stroke, become complex enough to satisfy the most exigeant solver of riddles. If this was the head of Sir Anthony Gyde, then the murderer of Klein had been in his turn murdered.
But Sir Anthony Gyde had been to his bankers that morning, and had signed a receipt for his wife’s jewels and obtained them.
This being so, he must have been murdered in the interval.
It was now after one o’clock. He must, if this was indeed his head, have been murdered and dismembered in the course of three hours, the head conveyed to 110B Piccadilly, and placed where it was found.
Of course, this was absurd. Of one thing alone Freyberger felt sure.
If this were indeed the head of Sir Anthony, then the thing bore some relation to the death of the valet Leloir. Whatever unthinkable tragedy, whatever inconceivable transformation, had caused the valet to die of terror, had some strong relationship to the presence of this head in the place where it had been found.
The thing must be verified. He obtained the address of Sir Anthony’s dentist from the butler, and having ordered a telegram to be sent to him to call at Vine Street at his earliest convenience, he left the house.