PAGE 24
In the Fog
by
“When Arthur turned on him Lyle hesitated for a moment, and then told him exactly what was the case against him.
“‘Ever since your brother was reported as having died in Africa,’ he said, ‘your Lordship has been collecting money on post obits. Lord Chetney’s arrival last night turned them into waste paper. You were suddenly in debt for thousands of pounds–for much more than you could ever possibly pay. No one knew that you and your brother had met at Madame Zichy’s. But you knew that your father was not expected to outlive the night, and that if your brother were dead also, you would be saved from complete ruin, and that you would become the Marquis of Edam.’
“‘Oh, that is how you have worked it out, is it?’ Arthur cried. ‘And for me to become Lord Edam was it necessary that the woman should die, too!’
“‘They will say,’ Lyle answered, ‘that she was a witness to the murder –that she would have told.’
“‘Then why did I not kill the servant as well!’ Arthur said.
“‘He was asleep, and saw nothing.’
“‘And you believe that?‘ Arthur demanded.
“‘It is not a question of what I believe,’ Lyle said gravely. ‘It is a question for your peers.’
“‘The man is insolent!’ Arthur cried. ‘The thing is monstrous! Horrible!’
“Before we could stop him he sprang out of his cot and began pulling on his clothes. When the nurses tried to hold him down, he fought with them.
“‘Do you think you can keep me here,’ he shouted, ‘when they are plotting to hang me? I am going with you to that house!’ he cried at Lyle. ‘When you find those bodies I shall be beside you. It is my right. He is my brother. He has been murdered, and I can tell you who murdered him. That woman murdered him. She first ruined his life, and now she has killed him. For the last five years she has been plotting to make herself his wife, and last night, when he told her he had discovered the truth about the Russian, and that she would never see him again, she flew into a passion and stabbed him, and then, in terror of the gallows, killed herself. She murdered him, I tell you, and I promise you that we will find the knife she used near her–perhaps still in her hand. What will you say to that?’
“Lyle turned his head away and stared down at the floor. ‘I might say,’ he answered, ‘that you placed it there.’
“Arthur gave a cry of anger and sprang at him, and then pitched forward into his arms. The blood was running from the cut under the bandage, and he had fainted. Lyle carried him back to the bed again, and we left him with the police and the doctors, and drove at once to the address he had given us. We found the house not three minutes’ walk from St. George’s Hospital. It stands in Trevor Terrace, that little row of houses set back from Knightsbridge, with one end in Hill Street.
“As we left the hospital Lyle had said to me, ‘You must not blame me for treating him as I did. All is fair in this work, and if by angering that boy I could have made him commit himself I was right in trying to do so; though, I assure you, no one would be better pleased than myself if I could prove his theory to be correct. But we cannot tell. Everything depends upon what we see for ourselves within the next few minutes.’
“When we reached the house, Lyle broke open the fastenings of one of the windows on the ground floor, and, hidden by the trees in the garden, we scrambled in. We found ourselves in the reception-room, which was the first room on the right of the hall. The gas was still burning behind the colored glass and red silk shades, and when the daylight streamed in after us it gave the hall a hideously dissipated look, like the foyer of a theatre at a matinee, or the entrance to an all-day gambling hell. The house was oppressively silent, and because we knew why it was so silent we spoke in whispers. When Lyle turned the handle of the drawing-room door, I felt as though some one had put his hand upon my throat. But I followed close at his shoulder, and saw, in the subdued light of many-tinted lamps, the body of Chetney at the foot of the divan, just as Lieutenant Sears had described it. In the drawing-room we found the body of the Princess Zichy, her arms thrown out, and the blood from her heart frozen in a tiny line across her bare shoulder. But neither of us, although we searched the floor on our hands and knees, could find the weapon which had killed her.