The Charing Cross Mystery

by J. S. Fletcher

The rest of the searchers, hearing that startled cry from the Jew, with one accord made for the upper part of the building. Robmore and Hetherwick reached him first; he was standing at the half-opened door of a room, into which he was staring with eager eyes. They pushed by him and entered.

Hetherwick took in the general aspect and contents of that room at a glance. It had been fitted up—recently, he thought, from certain small evidences—as a bed-sitting-room. A camp-bed stood in one corner; there was a washstand, a dressing table, a chest of drawers, two or three pictures, a shelf of books, a small square of carpet in the centre of the floor, the outer edges of which had been roughly and newly stained. On the bed lay, open, a suit-case, already packed with clothes and linen; by it lay an overcoat, hat, gloves, umbrella; it was evident that the man to whom it belonged had completed his preparations for a departure, and had nothing to do but to close and lock the suit-case, put on his overcoat and hat, pick up the other things and go away.

But the man himself? There was a big, old-fashioned easy chair at the side of the bed—a roomy, comfortable affair. A man lay, rather than sat, in it, in an attitude which suggested that he had dropped there as with a sudden weariness, laid his head back against the padded cushion, and—gone to sleep. But the men knew, all of them, as they crowded into that room, that it was no sleep that they had broken in upon—it was death. This, as the Jew had been quick to see, was a dead man—dead!

Hetherwick took him in as quickly as he had taken in his surroundings. His head lay quietly against the padding of the chair, a little inclined to his left shoulder: the face was fully visible. It was—to Hetherwick—the face of a stranger; in all his and Matherfield's investigations it had not been described to them. Yet he was certain that he was looking on the man known to them by repute as Ambrose. Disguised, of course—he had shaved off the dark beard and moustache of which they had heard, and he could see at once that the loss of them had made a remarkable difference in his appearance. But nothing could disguise his height and general build. This, without doubt, was the man Matherfield and he had hunted for, the man who had met Hannaford at Victoria, who had disappeared from his flat in the Adelphi—the man who was associated with Baseverie, and who——

"Dead as a door-nail!" muttered Robmore, bending close to the still figure. "And—he's been dead a good bit, too!—some hours, anyway. Stiff! Do ye know him, Mr. Hetherwick?"

Hetherwick said what he thought. Robmore pointed to the things on the bed.

"Looks as if he'd been taken with a seizure just as he was about to set off somewhere," he remarked. "Well, if this is the Dr. Ambrose we've been seeking—but let's see if he's got anything on him to prove his identity."

While the rest of the men stood by watching, he put his hand into the dead man's inside breast pocket—he was wearing a smart, brand-new grey tweed suit, Hetherwick, later on, remembered how its newness struck him as being incongruously out of place, somehow—and drew out a pocket-book. Touching Hetherwick's elbow and motioning him to follow him, he went over to the window, leaving the others still staring wonderingly at the dead man.

"This is a queer business, Mr. Hetherwick," he whispered as they drew apart. "You think this is the Dr. Ambrose we were after?"

"Sure of it!" answered Hetherwick. "He's shaved off his beard and moustache, and that's no doubt made a big difference in his appearance, but you may depend on it, this is the man! But what's caused his sudden death?"