“I expect the intention is to negotiate them in the City,” I remarked after I had been through them and roughly calculated that their value was about twenty thousand pounds.
“Yes. We’ll put them back and see who returns to fetch them. There’s evidently a widespread conspiracy here, and it is fortunate, Mr Hughes, that you’ve been able at last to fix the house. By Jove!” the inspector added with a smile, “we ourselves couldn’t have done better—indeed, we couldn’t have done as well as you did.”
“I only hope that we shall discover what has become of my friend Domville,” I said. “I intend that his death shall not go unavenged. He was in this room, I’ll swear to that. I’d know his voice among ten thousand.”
“We shall see,” remarked the officer, confidently. “First let us explore and discover how they got rid of their victims. I only hope nobody will return while we are below. If they do, Horton and Marvin will arrest them. We’ll take Edwards down with us.”
While the constable Marvin repacked the precious box to replace it, Pickering and myself went to the drawer and looked over the letters. Many of them were unimportant and incomprehensible, until one I opened written upon blue-grey notepaper bearing the heading: “Harewolde Abbey, Herefordshire.” It was in the well-known handwriting of Sybil Burnet! Amazed, I read eagerly as follows:—
“Yes. Fred Kinghorne is here. He is an American, and beyond the Marstons has, I believe, no friends in England. He is an excellent bridge player and has won heavily this week. He has told me that he is engaged to a girl named Appleton, daughter of a Wall Street broker, and that she and her mother are to meet him in Naples on the twentieth, for a tour in Italy. He leaves here next Saturday, and will stay at the Cecil for ten days prior to leaving for Italy. He is evidently very well off, and one of the reasons he is in England is to buy some jewellery as a wedding present for his bride. The Marstons tell me that he is the son of old Jacob Kinghorne, the great Californian financier. I hope this information will satisfy you.—S.”
Harewolde, as all the world knows, was one of the centres of the smart set. The Marstons entertained the royalties frequently, and there were rumours of bridge parties and high stakes. Why had Sybil given this curious information? Had the young man Kinghorne been marked down as one of the victims and enticed to that fatal house?
There was no envelope, and the commencement of the letter was abrupt, as though it had been enclosed with some unsuspicious communication.
Having read it, I laid it down without comment, for it was my last desire to incriminate the poor unhappy woman, who, shorn of her brilliancy, was now leading such a strange and lowly life in that dull South London street.
Yet could it be possible that she had acted for these blackguards as their secret agent in society?