“Well, Bruce, I leave everything to you. Make such arrangements as you think fit.”
The barrister’s mobile face softened with pity as he looked at his afflicted friend.
In four days Sir Charles Dyke had aged many years in appearance. No one who was acquainted with him in the past would have imagined that the loss of his wife could so affect him.
“I have done all that was possible, yet it is very little,” said Bruce, after a pause. “You are aware that I am supposed to be an adept at solving curious or criminal investigations of an unusual class. But in this case, partly, I suspect, because I myself am the last person who, to our common knowledge, saw Lady Dyke alive on Tuesday night, I am faced by a dead wall of impenetrable fact, through which my intellect cannot pierce. Yet I am sure that some day this wretched business will be intelligible. I will find her if living; I will find her murderer if she be dead.”
Not often did Claude Bruce allow his words to so betray his thoughts.
Both men were absorbed by the thrilling sensations of the moment, and they were positively startled when a servant suddenly announced:
“Inspector White, of Scotland Yard.”
A short, thick-set man entered. He was absolutely round in every part. His sturdy, rotund frame was supported on stout, well-moulded legs. His bullet head, with close-cropped hair, gave a suggestion of strength to his rounded face, and a pair of small bright eyes looked suspiciously on the world from beneath well-arched eyebrows.
Two personalities more dissimilar than those of Claude Bruce and Inspector White could hardly be brought together in the same room. People who are fond of tracing resemblances to animals in human beings would liken the one to a grey-hound, the other to a bull-dog.