Vandermeer left reluctantly and Quixtus resumed his work.
“The bizygomatic transverse diameter,” he wrote, putting down the beginning of the sentence that was in his head when Vandermeer was announced. He paused. He had lost the thread of his ideas. It was a subtle argument depending on the comparative measurements of newly discovered skulls. He threw down his pen impatiently, and in mild and gentlemanly language anathematised Vandermeer. He attacked the bizygomatic transverse diameter again; but the starving family occupied his thoughts. Presently he abandoned work for the morning and gave himself up to the relish of his wickedness. It had a delicious flavour. Practically he was slaying mother and babes, while he stood outside the ordinary repulsive and sordid circumstances of murder. Vandermeer should have his reward. After lunch, he felt impelled to visit them. A force stronger than a strong inclination to return to his paper led him out of the front-door and into a taxi-cab summoned from the neighbouring rank. He promised himself the thrill of gloating over the sufferings of his victims. Besides, the letter contained a challenge. “It would break a wolf’s heart to see them.” He would show the writer that his heart was harder than any wolf’s. Instinctively his hand sought the waistcoat pocket in which he kept his loose gold. Yes; there were three sovereigns. He smiled. It would be the finished craft of devildom to lay them out on a table before the woman’s hungering and ravished eyes and then, with a merciless chuckle, to pocket them again and walk out of the house.
“I will not be a fool,” he asserted, as the taxi-cab entered the Clerkenwell Road.
The taxi-cab driver signed that he wished to communicate with his fare. Quixtus leaned forward over the door.
“Do you know where Transiter Street is, Sir?”
Quixtus did not. Does any easy London gentleman know the mean streets in the purlieus of Clerkenwell? But, oddly enough, a milkman of the locality knew not Transiter Street either. Nor did a policeman on duty. Nor did a postman. Perplexed, Quixtus drove to the nearest District Post Office and made inquiries. There was no such street in Clerkenwell at all. He consulted the Post Office London Directory. There was no such street as Transiter Street in London.
Quixtus drove home in an angry mood. Once more he had been deceived. Vandermeer had invented the emaciated family for the sake of the fee. Did the earth hold a more abandoned villain? He grimly set about devising some punishment for his disingenuous counsellor. Nothing adequate occurred to him till some days afterwards when Vandermeer sent him another forged letter announcing the demise, in horrible torment, of the youngest child. He took up his pen and wrote as follows:
“My Dear Vandermeer,—I am sending Mrs. Wellgood the burial expenses. I have also enclosed a cheque for yourself. Will you kindly go to Transiter Street and claim it. For the present I have no further need of you.
“Yours sincerely,
“Ephraim Quixtus.”