Chapter Ten.
Leonard Langton Makes a Statement.
Search of the upper portion of the premises revealed nothing—nothing, at least, to arouse the undue suspicions of the searchers.
My eager glance was everywhere, but I discerned nothing further of an unusual nature. The one great truth had become impressed upon me that the man Kirk, madman or master criminal, had got rid of the evidences of his crime.
He must have disposed of the poor girl’s body in the same manner as that of her father!
I recollected that when seated with him in Bath Road, Bedford Park, he had admitted that he possessed another home. Was it in Foley Street, that squalid house where I had heard a woman’s frantic screams?
I knew my duty, yet I still hesitated to perform it. My duty as a good citizen was to tell the police, openly and frankly, all that I knew. Yet if I did so, would I be believed? Now, after I had allowed them to search the place, I should, if I spoke, surely be suspected of trying to shield myself.
No, having assumed an attitude of ignorance, I saw I was now compelled to retain it. Kirk, clever, crafty, and far-seeing, had most ingeniously sealed my lips.
Yet why, if he were the actual criminal, had he taken me, a perfect stranger, into his confidence? And again, what connection could the Eckhardt tyre have with the strange affair?
Who were those two mysterious callers who had followed his visit, and whom Pelham had seen? What could have been their object?