“But how on earth can my friendship with Thelma affect anyone else to such a degree as that?” I demanded, with some heat. “Stanley Audley might perhaps object, but even he could hardly imagine that it was a cause for murder. And even if he did the rather elaborate plot evolved by someone would hardly have been the line he would have chosen.”
Feng shook his head. “You can rule Stanley Audley, as the husband, out of your reckoning. But what about Stanley Audley, the bank-note forger. Suppose he and his associates know that your constant efforts to find him might mean bringing the whole gang to justice? Desperate men would not hesitate at murder when the stakes involved are so great. My own belief is they fear that by your continued friendship with Mrs. Audley you will pick up a hint that will set you—and the police—on the right track. Probably they think that is your real motive. Take my advice—I mean it very seriously—and cut yourself adrift from the whole thing. Go back to London, take up your work afresh—and forget Thelma ever existed.”
“I can’t and I won’t,” I declared passionately. “I’m going to try to get the man who attacked me, and I’m going to try to find Stanley Audley. Thelma thinks he is dead. I’m going to leave no stone unturned to find out the truth. If he is really alive and returns to her—well, I should have to keep away. In the meantime I want to discover the man who tried to murder me.”
“He will be discovered some day, you can be quite certain,” was Feng’s reply.
His tone surprised me completely: there was in it a curious ring of certainty entirely unexpected. It was as if he knew with certainty and positive conviction.
I glanced at him sharply. “You seem very certain of it,” I said.
“Well, I am pretty certain,” was his reply, with a curious expression on his usually inscrutable face. And once again came to my mind the uncanny conviction that the old fellow really knew a great deal more than he would tell me. My suspicions of him redoubled.
“Drop it, my boy,” he said kindly enough. “If you had taken my advice at first this would never have happened.”
Then for the twentieth time he went over with me every detail of the description of the mysterious stranger from Bradford. What motive lay behind the ceaseless questioning I could not imagine. Feng was not a policeman, he strongly opposed telling the police any more than we could help, yet he discussed the man from Bradford as though he expected to meet him in the street next day and arrest him on the instant.
But for what I had seen myself, but for the unmistakable “human eye” scarf-pin that I had unmistakably seen when in the throes of what was so nearly my death agony, I should have hesitated to believe that the mysterious man from Bradford could have been concerned in the attack on me. Anyone less like a criminal it would be difficult to conceive. His keen, cheery countenance, indelibly stamped on my recollection; his frank, engaging manner; his open, goodfellowship and gay-hearted discussion of any and every subject of interest that cropped up, all tended to give the lie to the suggestion that he would be a murderer in intent if not in fact. But that scarf-pin! It could not be mistaken. There could not by any stretch of coincidence be two such pins in that Stamford hotel on the same night. And upon that pin I had undoubtedly looked during that awful night when I so nearly lost my life.