‘Did he know that you were going to the Covent Garden Ball?’
‘Yes.’
‘He seems to have given you a pretty free hand?’
‘Certainly. I was practically my own master.’
‘And no one else was in the house when you went out?’
‘No one.’
‘That seems extraordinary! What about burglars?’
‘Well, you see, I don’t think that anybody would know the house is occupied. The dining-room is shut up. There is nothing to burgle. There are only a few valuable vases and bronzes that wouldn’t appeal to burglars.’
‘So he would let himself in with his key, would he?’
‘Yes.’
‘How many keys are there?’
‘Only his and mine.’
By this time they had reached the door of a small house in King Street. The house had been newly built. The bricks were red, the paint was white, and the door was green with dull red copper fittings.
Reggie opened the door, and they passed into a narrow hall and thence to the sitting-room.
Scarcely had Reggie turned the handle when he started back.
‘My God!’ he whispered, ‘someone has been here. The light has been turned out!’
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE CORPSE
WITH hesitating fingers he turned on the electric light, and then fell back nearly into the arms of Harding.
‘My God!’ he said. ‘It’s gone! There’s nothing on the floor!’
With wild, staring eyes he looked at Harding.
Harding returned his glance curiously. The conviction gradually growing in his mind was that Reggie had gone mad.
‘But I saw it, I saw it,’ said the other, detecting the suspicion. ‘I saw it, and I touched it. It was almost cold. It was lying there by the sofa—between the sofa and the fire. The head was on the ground. It seemed as though he might have fallen off the sofa. No, George, no. This is no hallucination. The body was there, as I told you, and it is not there now. Someone has taken it away!’
‘Thank Heaven,’ gasped Harding, ‘he may not be dead!’
‘Oh, yes,’ replied Reggie, firmly, ‘he is dead. Only the body has been taken away. That makes the mystery worse, more terrible.’
‘Come with me,’ said the lawyer, ‘this may be a matter of life and death for you. We must leave no stone unturned. I must search the house in your presence.’
And they searched it thoroughly. The kitchen door proved to be securely fastened: the windows had all been carefully closed. There was not a nook or cranny in which anyone could hide. No means of egress could be discovered.
At length, they returned to the sitting-room. Harding, who had had considerable experience of criminal work at the bar before taking ‘silk,’ felt himself completely nonplussed…provided Reggie was of sound mind. If the body on the floor was an hallucination, then the mystery ceased to exist. If his story—and he had told it lucidly and with no more excitement than the circumstances warranted—was accurate, that he had actually touched the dead man, then the mystery was so appalling as to be almost incredible. Either Clifford would return that night and, as a consequence, Reggie’s mental condition would be inquired into by people competent for such an undertaking or…or there were more things in heaven and earth…
Vainly he cast his mind this way and that, seeking a clue. Automatically he stroked the bronzes on the mantelpiece. Suddenly he took up a pair of spectacles which were lying there, open.
‘That’s curious,’ he commented. ‘I didn’t know Clifford had anything the matter with his eyes. He is one of the best shots I’ve ever seen.’
He was standing with his back to Reggie, who inquired:
‘What do you mean by that? He has the most wonderful eyesight. What makes you think he hasn’t?’
‘Why,’ exclaimed Harding, turning round, ‘these spectacles. A man does not wear spectacles if he has perfect sight.’
‘But Clifford never wore spectacles. These are not his spectacles.’
‘Are they yours or the charwoman’s?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Who can have left them here?’
‘My dear Harding,’ Reggie answered, ‘since I have been here, not a soul has entered the house. I tell you he never receives anybody here. I don’t know what he keeps the place for except for the excuse for giving me my £500.’
‘Nonsense,’ replied Harding, ‘you could have taken £500 a year all right without his putting himself out to run such an expensive hobby as a house in King Street, even a little house like this.’
‘I tell you what it is, Harding, the whole thing beats me. I have never been able to understand why a man should have his consulting-rooms in Harley Street and sleep here. Of course, no man could live in Harley Street. It is like living in a dissecting-room. But with his reputation he could have brought his patients to…Bayswater or Tulse Hill.’
Carefully the barrister examined the spectacles. He placed them on his nose. Then he whistled.
‘These are a woman’s spectacles,’ he said. ‘I am almost sure of that. They are too small for a man’s face. And the extraordinary thing about them is that they are plain glass, practically plain window-glass. Now what has he got these here for? How did a pair of woman’s spectacles of plain glass come into the possession of an eminent medical man?’
‘I don’t know, Harding. I’ve never seen them before. I suppose he brought them here.’
‘But why, in Heaven’s name?’ queried Harding.
‘A woman does not give away a common pair of steel spectacles as a gage d’amour. You noticed they were open when I found them, as though they had just been taken off the owner’s nose.’
‘Well, what do you make of it?’
The lawyer shrugged his shoulders.
‘Make of it? I don’t make anything of it, at all.’
He affected an air of joviality.
‘But I tell you what it is, Reggie. When Clifford comes home we will have you put away in an asylum for the term of your natural life. A man who comes to one’s house late at night with cock-and-bull stories of corpses on carpets is not needed; there is no market for him. Now I’m going home.’
Reggie, as he let him out, asked: ‘Do you really think that he’s not dead?’
‘The only conclusion to which I have come is that either he is dead or you are mad…if that is a conclusion.’
‘Am I to tell the police?’
‘No. Certainly not. Good-night.’ He turned abruptly up the street.
Reggie remained at the door, looking after the tall figure that strode briskly along the pavement.