“Well, it’s all over now,” said Mr. Ludgrove soothingly. “We haven’t had any of these mysterious deaths for nearly three months now. I don’t expect that Inspector Whyland will worry his head about the matter much longer.”
“I hope he won’t,” replied Mr. Copperdock truculently. “I’ll give him a piece of mind if he comes round worrying me much more. I’m as respectable a man as any in this street, I’d have him know.”
He finished his drink, and rose to go. Mr. Ludgrove saw him off the premises, then settled himself down once more in his chair to read.
Five minutes later he heard a heavy step hurrying through the shop, and the form of Mr. Copperdock appeared unceremoniously through the curtain that covered the door of the inner room. Mr. Ludgrove rose to his feet in concern. The tobacconist’s face was deathly pale, and his hands were trembling violently. He staggered across the room, and sank down into the chair he had so lately quitted.
He held out one shaking hand open towards the herbalist. “Here, look at this!” he exclaimed in a queer hoarse voice.
The herbalist bent over the outstretched hand. In the palm of it lay a white counter, upon which the figure VI had been roughly drawn in red ink.
Chapter XI.
The Sixth Counter
Mr. Ludgrove looked at the counter and then raised his eyes to Mr. Copperdock’s face. The tobacconist was staring at him with an expression of complete bewilderment and terror, very different from his truculent demeanour of a few minutes earlier. The herbalist checked the slow smile which had begun to twitch the corner of his lips, and sat down quietly opposite Mr. Copperdock.
“Where did you find this?” he asked.
“On my bed, after I left you just now,” replied the tobacconist. “It wasn’t there when I went out to the Cambridge Arms this evening, I’ll swear. I always goes upstairs to have a wash before I goes out, and I’d have been bound to have seen it. It’s that black sailor. I always thought he’d get me.”