Nor, indeed, was that the only solid link in the chain of guilt I was forging against the Spaniard. All at once I recalled how carefully he had avoided the passage where the spaniel had been stricken down. Was that accident—or conscience? Also the agility he had shown in scrambling up that iron pipe outside the hunchback’s shop when we went to spy on Zouche from that upstairs room. He had told me, of course, he had learned the trick at sea. He may have done that; but might he not also have acquired some recent practice outside Embankment Mansions which it seemed pretty clear the murderer entered by the same method?
Stung to desperation at my own foul success in linking my employer up with this awful crime I resolved that I would lose no time in tracking the man down, and his guilt. What did the Lake of Sacred Treasure in far-off Mexico matter to me in an hour red with blood as that was—the blood of one of my best and truest friends? Let the Earl of Fotheringay and Lord Cyril Cuthbertson plot and plan. Let Mr Cooper-Nassington ferret out Peter Zouche and drag from him the secret of the cipher manuscripts. Ay, let the Jesuits send their most trusty spies, I at least would take no hand in the struggle again until I had torn the mask from this villain.
Rising impatiently, I began striding rapidly up and down the room. Hitherto the minutes had gone by on the wings of the wind. I had not been conscious of the flight of time, although the hands on the travelling clock in front of me had travelled round the dial two, if not three, times. Now the seconds seemed made of lead. They would not pass. They hung about me, and fretted me. Again and again I asked myself: “Why does not José Casteno telegraph me as he had promised and tell me where he is and how he has fared since he slipped off on the track of the hunchback?” It was no good. No answer came, and bit by bit there formed in my mind a new suspicion, a new dread. What if the Spaniard had taken fright at the publicity the crime had obtained and had left his chase of Zouche to secure his own safety in some far-off land, where he would never be suspected and where he could never be found? I might wait, then, until the crack of doom: Colonel Napier would remain unavenged.
Feverishly I tore out into the streets and bought up all the late editions of the evening papers which I could lay my hands on. This mysterious crime had impressed the stolid imagination of Londoners so well accustomed to horrors that end in nothingness to a degree that was quite unusual; and all the journals had launched out into lurid descriptions of the dead man and the manner of his passing so that a horrid sense of nausea seized on me, and I cursed journalism and all its loathsome enterprise; albeit it I was most eager myself at the same moment to take advantage of its discoveries.
One paper, however, had got a paragraph that threw a new light on the occurrence—the Star—and I read it with throbbing eagerness:
A STARTLING THEORY
“Latest inquiries to-night tend to show that there is a good deal behind the death of Colonel Napier. The police are certain that the murderer has some other object than theft, at which task it was said that he must have been disturbed by the sudden tapping on the door by the valet, Richardson. It is rumoured that the appearance of Detective Naylor on the scene was of set design. Naylor, as was stated in the papers a few days ago, has the warrant in hand for the arrest of the murderer of young George Sutton, a man who, it will be remembered, fled to this country from a monastery in Mexico after he had committed the deed. Now the two crimes are connected in the minds of the police for some reason they will not divulge; and it is whispered freely at Scotland Yard that a man who puts his hands on the murderer of Sutton will at the same time arrest the assassin of brave Colonel Napier. Unfortunately, the quest is highly complicated, and at the clubs there are some wild, romantic stories afloat, which connect the deaths with stories of vast, hidden treasures and diplomatic intrigues, party jealousies, and mystery-loving Mexicans. For our own part, we advise the public to take little heed of these wild romances until they contain something which looks a trifle more substantial. A milkman, for instance, has been found who declares he was passing Whitehall Court about the time the murder must have been committed, and he swears positively that he saw a young, dark-looking foreigner, aged about twenty-five, run from the direction of Embankment Mansions and disappear up Northumberland Avenue. He says, also, that he saw the man’s features quite distinctly, and that he will be able to recognise them again in any circumstances and after any lapse of time. Now clues like these are worth a thousand of the utterly preposterous yarns they are whispering in Clubland to-night about Jesuits and parliamentary personages who are much too busy to be mixed up with all the numberless scandals and tarradiddles that affect the House of Commons under its present party régime.”
Surely, if this theory pointed to anyone it did most certainly to José Casteno!
Further speculation, however, was cut short by the arrival of a telegraph messenger. With trembling fingers I tore open the envelope, and found that, after all, the Spaniard had kept his word and had wired me, most fully, news of his whereabouts and wishes:
To Hugh Glynn, 99 Stanton Street, London, WC.