In the Fog

by Richard Harding Davis

“‘Do you appreciate what that means?’ he cried. ‘It means that some one has been here ahead of us. Some one has entered this house not three hours before we came, since eleven o’clock this morning.’

“‘It was the Russian servant!’ I exclaimed.

“‘The Russian servant has been under arrest at Scotland Yard,’ Lyle cried. ‘He could not have taken the letters. Lord Arthur has been in his cot at the hospital. That is his alibi. There is some one else, some one we do not suspect, and that some one is the murderer. He came back here either to obtain those letters because he knew they would convict him, or to remove something he had left here at the time of the murder, something incriminating,—the weapon, perhaps, or some personal article; a cigarette-case, a handkerchief with his name upon it, or a pair of gloves. Whatever it was it must have been damning evidence against him to have made him take so desperate a chance.’

“‘How do we know,’ I whispered, ‘that he is not hidden here now?’

“‘No, I’ll swear he is not,’ Lyle answered. ‘I may have bungled in some things, but I have searched this house thoroughly. Nevertheless,’ he added, ‘we must go over it again, from the cellar to the roof. We have the real clew now, and we must forget the others and work only it.’ As he spoke he began again to search the drawing-room, turning over even the books on the tables and the music on the piano. “‘Whoever the man is,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘we know that he has a key to the front door and a key to the letter-box. That shows us he is either an inmate of the house or that he comes here when he wishes. The Russian says that he was the only servant in the house. Certainly we have found no evidence to show that any other servant slept here. There could be but one other person who would possess a key to the house and the letter-box—and he lives in St. Petersburg. At the time of the murder he was two thousand miles away.’ Lyle interrupted himself suddenly with a sharp cry and turned upon me with his eyes flashing. ‘But was he?’ he cried. ‘Was he? How do we know that last night he was not in London, in this very house when Zichy and Chetney met?’

“He stood staring at me without seeing me, muttering, and arguing with himself.

“‘Don’t speak to me,’ he cried, as I ventured to interrupt him. ‘I can see it now. It is all plain. It was not the servant, but his master, the Russian himself, and it was he who came back for the letters! He came back for them because he knew they would convict him. We must find them. We must have those letters. If we find the one with the Russian postmark, we shall have found the murderer.’ He spoke like a madman, and as he spoke he ran around the room with one hand held out in front of him as you have seen a mind-reader at a theatre seeking for something hidden in the stalls. He pulled the old letters from the writing-desk, and ran them over as swiftly as a gambler deals out cards; he dropped on his knees before the fireplace and dragged out the dead coals with his bare fingers, and then with a low, worried cry, like a hound on a scent, he ran back to the waste-paper basket and, lifting the papers from it, shook them out upon the floor. Instantly he gave a shout of triumph, and, separating a number of torn pieces from the others, held them up before me.

“‘Look!’ he cried. ‘Do you see? Here are five letters, torn across in two places. The Russian did not stop to read them, for, as you see, he has left them still sealed. I have been wrong. He did not return for the letters. He could not have known their value. He must have returned for some other reason, and, as he was leaving, saw the letter-box, and taking out the letters, held them together—so—and tore them twice across, and then, as the fire had gone out, tossed them into this basket. Look!’ he cried, ‘here in the upper corner of this piece is a Russian stamp. This is his own letter—unopened!’

“We examined the Russian stamp and found it had been cancelled in St. Petersburg four days ago. The back of the envelope bore the postmark of the branch station in upper Sloane Street, and was dated this morning. The envelope was of official blue paper and we had no difficulty in finding the two other parts of it. We drew the torn pieces of the letter from them and joined them together side by side. There were but two lines of writing, and this was the message: ‘I leave Petersburg on the night train, and I shall see you at Trevor Terrace after dinner Monday evening.’

“‘That was last night!’ Lyle cried. ‘He arrived twelve hours ahead of his letter—but it came in time—it came in time to hang him!’”