“You think they’ve been murdered?”
“Of course,” answered the astute Cleugh. “But the doctor can’t discover how. There is not a scratch upon them. The discovery of those flash notes on the man looks as though he were a bit of a swell swindler, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. Then taking him across to the dining-table I explained how we had discovered the three cards concealed beneath the plates.
He took the cards in his hand, turning them over, and examining them carefully.
“Strange,” he ejaculated. “This adds still another phase to the affair. It is really a most sensational discovery, and will work up well for to-morrow.”
“No, Mr Cleugh,” put in Patterson quickly, overhearing his remark, “I beg of you to publish nothing whatever about it until I give you permission. In this we are bound to preserve secrecy for the present in order that our inquiries may not be thwarted. Even the neighbours will remain in ignorance of the real nature of things, so carefully do I intend to guard against any public sensation. Whatever information I can give you I will do so willingly, in order that you can prepare your account of it, but remember that not a word must be published until I give you permission.”
“Quite right,” observed the doctor. “In such a matter as this any sensation in the Press might frustrate all your efforts to arrive at the truth.”
“Very well,” answered Dick, a trifle disappointedly. “Of course you’ll give nothing to anybody else. I want to be first in the field with it.”
“Of that I give you my word. Not a soul will know of this discovery outside the persons in this house at the present moment. Come, let’s go upstairs and speak to Boyd,” and while the doctor wished us good evening and left, my two friends accompanied me upstairs, where in the drawing-room the detectives were continuing their searching investigation.
“The woman is decidedly good-looking, isn’t she?” observed Cleugh as we entered.
Instinctively I turned towards the chair in which the body was still reclining, but next instant, with a loud cry of dismay, which at the same moment was echoed by Patterson, I stood aghast, rigid, immovable.
The sight which met our eyes was utterly bewildering.
The woman we had discovered there, so lovely in form and feature, had a wealth of auburn hair, and eyes of a deep intense blue, while, amazing though it was, this woman before us was quite ten years older, dark-complexioned, with hair which in that light seemed blue-black, and half-closed eyes as dark as jet.
“Good Heavens!” I gasped. “Look! Why, that is not the woman we found when we first entered this place — but another. Where is the fair girl?”
“There’s no fair girl,” answered the detective Boyd, as all started back in surprise at my astounding assertion. “This is the woman we found, you must be mistaken.”
“No,” Patterson declared in the low, hoarse voice of one filled with fear. “There is no mistake. When we first entered there was another woman here, younger, prettier, with light hair and blue eyes. This is the most unaccountable, most amazing and most inexplicable of all our discoveries.”
Chapter Five
The Second Woman
The statement that the woman found by Patterson on his first entry there, and seen by me afterwards, had disappeared, was at first discredited by our companions. It seemed too astounding to be the truth, nevertheless there was now reclining in the same armchair a woman who certainly bore no resemblance whatever to the beautiful, fair-haired girl with eyes of such deep, pure blue — those eyes that had stared at me so horribly in the ghastly rigidity of death. I recollected that smile upon her lips, half of sarcasm, half of pleasure; that strange expression which had held me entranced yet horrified.
She had disappeared, and here in her place was a dark-complexioned woman, older, nevertheless handsome — a woman in whose refined face was an air of romance and tragedy, and upon whose hand was the marriage bond. She, too, was dead. The doctor had examined her and pronounced life extinct.
“How could this have occurred?” I exclaimed, turning to Patterson as soon as I had recovered from the shock of the astounding discovery.
“It’s simply amazing!” he declared. “I’m utterly at a loss to account for it. The woman we found here was most distinctly another person.”
“Then there has been a triple tragedy,” observed Boyd. “The body of the first woman must have been conveyed away during the time you were absent at the police-station.”
“But why?” I asked. “What on earth could be the motive?”
“Impossible to tell,” Patterson answered. “Perhaps the body is hidden somewhere in the house.”
“No,” Boyd replied. “We’ve made a complete search everywhere. It has undoubtedly been taken away. This fact, in itself, shows first, that there is more than one person implicated in the crime, and secondly, that they were absolutely fearless; while further, the incident of the telephone is in itself sufficient proof that they had taken the utmost precautions against detection.”
“Are you quite certain that every cupboard and wardrobe has been looked into?” I asked doubtfully.
“Quite. From garret to cellar we’ve thoroughly overhauled the place. There are a couple of large trunks in one of the bedrooms, but we examined the contents of both. They contain books.”
“But loose boards, or places of that sort?” I suggested.
“When we search a place,” responded the Scotland Yard inspector with a smile, “we’re always on the look-out for places of concealment. I’ve superintended the investigation myself, and I vouch that nothing is concealed within this house.”
“Do you think that the assassin was actually in the house when we first entered?”
“That’s more than likely,” he answered with a pensive air. “Evidently the instant you’d gone the body of the fair-haired girl was somehow spirited away.”
“Where?”
“Ah, that’s what we must find out. Perhaps a taxi-driver will be able to throw a light upon the matter.”
“This is certainly a first-class mystery,” observed Dick, with journalistic instinct and a keen eye to those “special interviews” and “latest revelations” in which readers of his journal always revelled. “It will make no end of a stir. What a godsend, now that the gooseberry season is coming on.”
A good murder mystery is always welcome to a certain class of London daily journals, but more especially in the season when Parliament is “up,” the Courts are closed for the Vacation, and the well of sensations runs low. This season is termed, in journalistic parlance, “the gooseberry season,” on account of the annual appearance of the big gooseberry, that mythical monster of our youth, the sea-serpent, and the starting of the usual silly correspondence upon “Why should we live?” or some equally interesting controversial subject.
We were all held in blank astonishment at this latest development of the extraordinary affair. It had so many remarkable phases that, even to Boyd, one of the shrewdest officers of the Criminal Investigation Department, it was bewildering.
To me, however, the disappearance of that dead woman with the fair, pure face was the strangest of all that tangle of astounding facts. That face had impressed me. Its every feature had been riveted indelibly upon my memory, for it was a face which, in life, I should have fallen down and worshipped as an idol, for there was about it a purity