But the main question was the reason of his supposed chance meeting with me in the express between York and London.
During our chat I feared to refer to Gabrielle lest he should suspect that I knew of his subtle intrigue. I could see that he was congratulating himself upon his cleverness in misleading me, therefore I chuckled inwardly.
What I desired most at that moment was to establish the connexion between the elegant cosmopolitan Frenchman and Oswald De Gex with his wily accomplice Moroni. That the latter was a man of criminal instinct I had long ago established. He was a toady to a man of immense wealth—a clever medical man who, by reason of his callous unscrupulousness, was a dealer in Death in its most insidious and least-looked-for form. The hand of death is ever at the command of every medical man, hence mankind has to thank the medical profession—one of the hardest-worked and least recognized in the world—for its honesty, frankness and strict uprightness. In every profession we have black sheep—even, alas! in the Church. But happily unscrupulousness in those who practise medicine in Great Britain is practically an unknown quantity.
But in Europe it is different, for in the dossiers held by the police of Paris, Rome, Madrid and Berlin criminals who practise medicine are written largely, as witnessed by the evidence in more than one famous trial where the accused has been sentenced to death.
I longed to go to Scotland Yard and tell my story. Yet how could I do so when, in a drawer in my room, there reposed that bundle of Bank of England notes, the price paid to me for being the accomplice of a mysterious crime? I could only seek a solution of the enigma alone and unaided by the authorities. I seemed to be making a little headway, yet each fact I established added complications to the amazing affair.
Further, I must here confess to you that during the past day or two I had found myself actually in love with the beautiful girl whose mentality had been wilfully destroyed by some means which medical science failed to establish. From the first I had been filled with great admiration for her. She was indeed very beautiful, with wonderful eyes and a perfect complexion. There was grace in every movement, save when at times she held herself rigid, with fixed blank eyes as though fascinated, or gripped by some invisible power. More than once I had wondered whether she were under hypnotic influence, but that theory had been completely negatived by Sir Charles Wendover.
Be that as it may, I had now fallen desperately in love with the girl whom I was seeking to rescue from her enemies.
Why had the body of Gabrielle Engledue been cremated if not to destroy all evidence of a crime? Gabrielle Tennison still lived; therefore another woman must have lost her life by foul means—most probably by poison—in face of the pains that were taken by Moroni to efface all trace of the cause of death.
Over our tea the affable French banker told me of a rapid journey to Liverpool which he had taken a few days before, he having some pressing business with a man who was on the point of sailing for New York. The person in question had absconded from Paris owing the bank a large sum of money, and he had that day cabled to the New York police asking for his arrest on landing.
“I shall probably be compelled to go across to America and apply for him to be sent back to Paris,” my friend said, “so I am going back for instructions.”