I looked at the speaker and endeavored to read his expression, but the deep-set eyes dropped the moment they encountered my gaze, and the clear-cut cruel lips and formidable jaw, together with the down-cast eyes made one of the most unpleasing masks it had ever been my evil fortune to gaze upon.
I thought of the masks of murderers in Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors, and began to regard my visitor with a curious interest.
“Will you have a glass of brandy, Jacques?” I inquired, piqued by the man’s impenetrability, and trusting to the liquor to thaw it.
“Thank you, sir.”
But the potent liquor served only to harden the deep lines which guarded the reticent lips, and after I had measured the implacable face and found no encouragement there, I said, “Jacques, that is all,” and, with a low bow the inscrutable valet, or detective, left.
After he had closed the door, I amused myself by sketching his head in profile upon the blotting pad. As the sketch lay before me it certainly did not represent, according to either phrenologists or physiognomists, a bad or wicked head. It was simply the side face of a self-contained, determined man, and one possessed of considerable possibility of lofty purpose.
I tossed the paper from me—disappointed in the sketch even more than I had been in the original.
On the fourth day after my friend had left, I was aroused at an early hour by the valet, who, after apologizing for the intrusion, handed me the morning paper, and pointed to the announcement of another suicide by a public functionary, and under circumstances precisely similar to the cases which had preceded it.
As in the other instances, the victim’s hand grasped a razor, to account for the deep wound in his throat, while his death was in reality due to the puncture of the brain by the concealed dagger point.
My instant impulse was to telegraph for my friend to enable him to take up the scent while it was fresh. I accordingly framed a message for the valet to send in his own name, and this I—still in bed—requested him to dispatch.