Allerdyke took the card and looked at it with a mingled feeling of repulsion and fascination. The writing on it was thin, angular, upright, and it suggested foreign origin. And the communication was brief—and unsigned—
"High Street morning eleven sharp left-hand side old houses."
"You don't recognize that handwriting, of course, Mr. Allerdyke?" asked
Chettle. "Never seen it before, I suppose?"
"No!" replied Allerdyke. "Never. But I should say it's a foreigner's."
"Very likely," assented Chettle. "Aye, well, sir, it lured the man to his death. And now I'll show you where he died, and how easy it was for the murderer to kill him and get away unobserved."
He pulled the cab up at the corner of the High Street, and turned southward towards the river, looking round at his companion with one of his sly smiles.
"I daresay that you, being a Yorkshireman, Mr. Allerdyke, know all about this old street," he remarked as they walked forward. "I never saw it, never heard of it, until the other day, when I was sent down on this Lydenberg business, but it struck me at once. I should think it's one of the oldest streets left in England."
"It is," answered Allerdyke. "I know it well enough, and I've seen it changed. It used to be the street of the old Hull merchants—they had their houses and warehouses all combined, with gardens at the back running down to the river Hull. Queer old places there used to be in this street, I can tell you when I was a lad!—of late years they've pulled a lot of property down that had got what you might call thoroughly worm-eaten—oh, yes, the place isn't half as ancient or picturesque as it was even twenty years ago!"
"There's plenty of the ancient about it still, for all that," observed Chettle, with a dry laugh. "There was more than enough of it for Lydenberg the other day, at any rate. Now, then, you remember what it said on the postcard—he was to walk down the High Street, on the left-hand side, at eleven o'clock? Very well—down the High Street he walks, on this side which we are now—he strolls along, by these old houses, looking about him, of course, for the person he was to meet. The few people who were about down here that morning, and who saw him, said that he was looking about from side to side. And all of a sudden a shot rang out, and Lydenberg fell—just here—right on this very pavement."
He pulled Allerdyke up in a narrow part of the old street, jointed to the flags, and then to the house behind them—an ancient, ramshackle place, the doors and windows of which were boarded up, the entire fabric of which showed unmistakable readiness for the pick and shovel of the house-breaker. And he laid a hand on one of the shattered windows, close by a big hole in the decaying wood.