“Extremely,” said the cab-driver. “The fellow must have murdered her, and then entered the place in order to get away. He’s a pretty cute ’un.”
“It seems a clear case of murder,” exclaimed the other in a sharp, precise, business-like tone. “We’ll take her to the hospital first; then you must come with me to Vine Street at once.”
When they emerged, they found that the crowd had already assumed enormous proportions. The news that a woman had been murdered spread instantly throughout the whole neighbourhood, and the surging crowd of idlers, all curiosity, pressed around the vehicle to obtain a glimpse of the dead woman’s face. Amid the crowd, elbowing his way fiercely and determinedly, was a man whose presence there was a somewhat curious coincidence, having regard to what had previously transpired that evening. He wore a silk hat, his frock-coat was tightly buttoned and he carried in his gloved hand a silver-mounted cane. After considerable difficulty, he obtained a footing in front of the crowd immediately behind the cordon the police had formed around the vehicle, and in a few moments, by craning his neck forward, obtained nil uninterrupted view of the lady’s face.
His teeth were firmly set, but his calm countenance betrayed no sign of astonishment. For an instant he regarded the woman with a cold, impassive look, then quickly he turned away, glancing furtively right and left, and an instant later was lost in the surging, struggling multitude which a body of police were striving in vain to “move on.”
The man who had thus gazed into the dead woman’s face was the man to whom she had been introduced at the station. Major Gordon Maitland.
Almost at the same moment when the Major turned away, the constable sprang into the cab beside the woman, and the driver, at once mounting the box, drove rapidly to Charing Cross Hospital.
To the small, bare, whitewashed room to the left of the entrance hall, where casualties are received, the dark-haired girl was carried, and laid tenderly upon the father-covered divan.
The dresser, who attended to minor accidents, gave a quick glance at the face of the new patient, and at once sent for the house-surgeon. He saw it was a grave case.
Very soon the doctor, a thin, elderly man, entered briskly, asked a couple of questions of the constable outside in the corridor, unloosened her dress, cut the cord of her corsets, laid his hands upon her heart, felt her pulse, slowly moved her eyelids, and then shook his head.
“Dead!” he exclaimed. “She must have died nearly an hour ago.”