“Suicide?”
“Murder, very possibly,” was Jevons’ quiet response.
“Then you really think there’s a mystery, sir?” exclaimed the constable quickly.
“It seems suspiciously like one. Let us search the room. Come along Ralph,” he added, addressing me. “Just lend a hand.”
There was not much furniture in the place to search, and before long, with the aid of the constable’s lantern, we had investigated every nook and cranny.
Only one discovery of note was made, and it was certainly a strange one.
Beneath a loose board, near the fireplace, Jevons discovered the dead man’s hoard. It consisted of several papers carefully folded together. We examined them, and found them to consist of a hawker’s licence, a receipt for the payment for a barrow and donkey, a post-office savings bank book, showing a balance of twenty-six pounds four shillings, and several letters from a correspondent unsigned. They were type-written, in order that the handwriting should not be betrayed, and upon that flimsy paper used in commercial offices. All of them were of the highest interest. The first, read aloud by Ambler, ran as follows:—
“Dear Lane,—I have known you a good many years, and never thought you were such a fool as to neglect a good thing. Surely you will reconsider the proposal I made to you the night before last in the bar of the Elephant and Castle? You once did me a very good turn long ago, and now I am in a position to put a good remunerative bit of business in your way. Yet you are timid that all may not turn out well! Apparently you do not fully recognise the stake I hold in the matter, and the fact that any exposure would mean ruin to me. Surely I have far more to lose than you have. Therefore that, in itself, should be sufficient guarantee to you. Reconsider your reply, and give me your decision to-morrow night. You will find me in the saloon bar of the King Lud, in Ludgate Hill, at eight o’clock. Do not speak to me there, but show yourself, and then wait outside until I join you. Have a care that you are not followed. That hawk Ambler Jevons has scent of us. Therefore, remain dumb and watchful—Z.”
“That’s curious,” I remarked. “Whoever wrote that letter was inciting Lane to conspiracy, and at the same time held you in fear, Ambler.”
My companion laughed again—a quiet self-satisfied laugh. Then he commenced the second letter, type-written like the first, but evidently upon another machine.