“Mr Kolbecker said that wasn’t to be touched on no account,” said the woman. “It’s an old marble thing he broke up ’fore he went into the country.”
Freyberger did not reply. He was examining the pieces of marble attentively.
They were not simply rough lumps of marble; each was rough in part, and partly smooth, and he had not been examining them for more than half a minute when he discovered the fact that they were portions of a bust broken to pieces by Kolbecker, for some reason or other, before he made his mysterious journey to Cumberland under the name of Klein.
He drew the drawer bodily out of the chest of drawers, placed it on the bed and sat down beside it.
Yes, without doubt, these broken up pieces of marble once constituted the bust of a man. Here was part of the nose with the nostrils delicately chiselled, here the chin, here a piece of the forehead.
Freyberger, dropping back into the drawer the pieces he had taken out, fell for a moment into a reverie.
Kolbecker, the man whom Gyde had murdered, had suddenly assumed large proportions in his intuitive brain.
What was the mystery surrounding this man?
He had gone to Cumberland to blackmail Gyde, assuming the name of Klein, that was perfectly understandable. But why, in the name of common sense, had he left his blackmailing letters behind him?
Gyde, driven to desperation, had murdered him. That, too, was understandable, but why the mutilation?