“I expect so,” Sir Clinton acquiesced. “No, don't go on yet. I've something to show you before we go farther. I didn't care to produce it before all that audience down at the rock.”
He put his hand into his pocket and pulled out the piece of note-paper found on Staveley's body. Wendover leaned over and examined it as the chief constable unfolded it.
“Hullo! The hotel heading's on the paper, Clinton,” he exclaimed. “This is getting a bit near home, surely.”
“It is,” said Sir Clinton drily. “I'll read it, inspector. It's short and very much to the point, apparently. The date on it is yesterday. This is how it goes. There's no ‘Dear So-and-so’ or anything of that sort at the beginning.
“Your letter has come as a complete surprise, as you expected, no doubt. You seem to know all about what has happened, and I suppose you will do all you can to make the worst of things—at least I can't take any other meaning out of what you have written. I shall come to Neptune's Seat to-night at 11 p.m. to hear what you have to say. But I warn you plainly that I will not submit to being blackmailed by you, since that seems to be what is in your mind.”
And the signature,” Sir Clinton concluded, “is Cressida Fleetwood.”
The inspector leaned forward and took the letter.
“Now we've got something to go on!” he exclaimed jubilantly. “That name, coupled with the hotel note-paper, ought to let us lay our hands on her within half an hour, if we've any luck at all.”
Wendover had been thunder-struck by the revelation of the signature. His mind involuntarily called up a picture of Cressida as he had seen her less than twenty-four hours earlier, frank and care-free, and so evidently happy with her husband. A girl like that could hardly be mixed up with a brutal murder; it seemed too incongruous. Then across his memory flitted a recollection of Sir Clinton's description of the poker-sharp, and the implied warning against trusting too much to appearances; but he resolutely put them aside. A glance at Armadale's face tended to increase his bias, for it displayed a hardly restrained exultation. Quite evidently the inspector supposed that his case was now well on the road to a satisfactory solution.
“Damned man-hunter!” Wendover commented inwardly, quite forgetting that a few minutes earlier he himself had been every bit as eager as the inspector. “I don't want to see her fall into that brute's hands.”