“Well—if you are not perfectly frank with me, Mr Kirk,” I protested, “I cannot see how I can regard you as a sincere friend. This is a serious and complicated problem, in which you require my assistance in an endeavour to seek a solution. How can I form any conclusions or help you if you deliberately hold back from me some of the circumstances?”
“I have held back none,” was his hasty response—“at least, none which have any bearing whatever upon the tragedy. It is of myself and my own connection with Greer that I am speaking. I was the first person called, before there was even a suspicion of anything wrong. The fact is, the dead man trusted me implicitly.”
“And, according to your showing, certain enemies of yours suspected the truth—that your friendship for the Professor was only feigned.”
My companion looked me straight in the face with his narrow-set eyes, and replied:
“My dear Mr Holford, what my enemies say was, I admit, perfectly correct. I have sought to conceal nothing. Greer believed that I was his friend, but I hated him. I had good cause to do so!”
The man’s crafty eyes again met mine, and I saw in them an expression which I had never noticed before. Was it possible that he was the unknown assassin, and was only misleading me by clever and cunning devices?
I recollected that he had told me that the Professor had stolen from him some valuable secret. Well, if he did not fear the crime of retaliation being brought home to him, why did he not go openly and lay the facts before the police? His evasive replies and thin excuses appeared to be utterly ridiculous. In my foolish ignorance I still believed Kershaw Kirk to be an ordinary individual, much like myself. The remarkable truth had not then been revealed to me—as it was later.
We descended to the dining-room, where Antonio and his brother Pietro were still watching beside the couch whereon lay the poor girl who had met with such a strange and inexplicable fate.
Kirk again knelt beside her, and for a long time searched for any wound she might bear. But he found none.
“Remember, Antonio, no person must enter this house under any pretext whatever,” my companion ordered. “You are responsible.”