I had noticed a small dismal post office at the end of the street not fifty yards off. I would go and post them, registered to my lawyers, in whom I had the greatest confidence.
To the taking of this resolve and the carrying of it out, instead of returning to the downstairs room, I always attribute, in the light of subsequent events, the saving of my life. I left the door "on the jar" and ran quickly to the post office. There I demanded their largest sized registered envelope, and they fortunately had a big one.
Into this I crammed the two packets—which I noticed were both directed to me in a very neat lady's hand—and then, as an afterthought, the handkerchief which I had found in the bed. Finally I put the key of the safe in too. With my back to the ever curious clerk, I directed it to myself—
c/o Messrs. BLACKETT & SNOWDON,
Solicitors,
Lincoln's Inn,
London.
Then, slapping it down before the astonished official, I demanded a receipt for it.
This obtained, I hastened back to 190; the door was still as I had left it, but in a few moments the doctor returned, and at his heels a policeman.
"The inspector will be here directly," announced Dr. Redfern. "We had better wait outside until he arrives."
We walked up and down for nearly a quarter of an hour while the doctor smoked a cigarette, and meanwhile the policeman, a person of gigantic stature and a bucolic expression of countenance, eyed me suspiciously.
Presently the inspector arrived, and the doctor and I returned with him to the sitting-room downstairs. There the police official insisted upon my giving a full account of the whole matter, while he stood critically by with a notebook in his hand. I told him the whole truth from the time of my seeing the old lady at the door, to the time of my calling in the doctor, but I suppressed all mention of the two packets and the secret safe. These being confidential matters between me and the old lady, I did not feel at liberty to disclose them.
I saw very plainly from the looks the inspector gave me that he did not believe me; he even had doubts, it was very evident, whether I was staying at the Hotel Magnifique at all, as I had informed him at the commencement of my statement.