“Have you any chance of finding that?”
Mr. Quickjohn looked inscrutably wise. “I am in hopes of doing so. But that will mean setting to work in quite a fresh direction.”
“You have no clue as yet?”
Mr. Quickjohn rose. As an artist he cared to show only his finished work, and this was scarcely more than blocked in.
“I have several sources of information to tap,” he replied vaguely, “but nothing to report as yet. Well, I’ll say good evening, Mr. Herriard. I thought you might be interested to hear I had put my finger on the party, if one may say so of a deceased man. I’m only sorry the party is not alive,” he went on, with a suspicion of jocularity. “It would have been a big sensational case and would have made my fortune in the profession. There’s all the difference between a big crime in the upper classes and the same in the lower as there is between, you may say, the Royal Opera at Covent Garden and a nigger with a banjo outside a public-house. Still I hope what I have so far cleared up will be satisfactory to you and your late client. Good evening, sir.”
CHAPTER XXI
THE MASK FALLS
THE door had closed upon Inspector Quickjohn, and Herriard sat motionless, as though dazed by this last turn of the situation. He had been wandering blindfold in a maze, and had suddenly found the centre. Or, rather, he felt as though he had been moving unsuspectingly over the meshes of a great spider’s web, had reached at length the central plexus, and was there held, uncertain from which point the fell spinner of the web would dart down to attack him. Which was the safe way out of this coil of evil? At least he would not wait paralyzed: he must act.
The chiming of a clock warned him of his engagement to Gastineau. No; he could not go there again. The man might not, after all, be an actual murderer, Martindale might have brought his death on himself. Still, if anything in this world were sure, it was certain that Paul Gastineau was a son of evil, as full of cunning malice as a man could be. How should he meet him again, how could he touch that guilty hand? Never. The breach must be made at once, and if a fight was inevitable, he must declare it.
Herriard drew a case of telegraph forms towards him and filled one in to Gastineau under his assumed name. “Detained in chambers, sorry cannot see you to-night.” He went out and sent it off, then turned into a restaurant hard by and ate his dinner with what appetite was left him.
“He killed Martindale,” that was the one fact which kept crying aloud in his brain. He could think of nothing else. How fate had completed the circle! He tried to analyze the consequences. Was this knowledge a weapon in his hand to crush Gastineau? Yes. No. At least, how could he use it? Would it not mean that Gastineau with his devilish ingenuity would probably turn aside the blow that looked so telling, and make a swift, fierce counter attack to his opponent’s destruction? How could he, Herriard, accuse of a terrible crime the man with whom he had had such a questionable connection? He was the only man in the world who knew that Gastineau had survived his injuries. What an incredible, and, indeed, disreputable, tale he would have to tell if he ventured to speak out.