‘Yes; everybody has his little fad, though. Where was this found — close by here?’
‘Yes, sir; just there, almost opposite this window, in the little corner.’
‘About two o’clock?’
‘Ah, about that time, more or less.’
Hewitt took the umbrella up, unfastened the band, and shook the silk out loose. Then he opened it, and as he did so a small scrap of paper fell from inside it. Hewitt pounced on it like lightning. Then, after examining the umbrella thoroughly, inside and out, he handed it back to the man, who had not observed the incident of the scrap of paper.
‘That will do, thanks,’ he said. ‘I only wanted to take a peep at it — just a small matter connected with a little case of mine. Good-morning.’
He turned suddenly and saw, gazing at him with a terrified expression from a door behind, the face of the woman who had followed him in the cab. The veil was lifted, and he caught but a mere glance of the face ere it was suddenly withdrawn. He stood for a moment to allow the woman time to retreat, and then left the station and walked toward his office, close by.
Scarcely thirty yards along the Strand he met Plummer. ‘I’m going to make some much closer inquiries all down the line as far as Dover,’ Plummer said. ‘They wire from Calais that they have no clue as yet, and I mean to make quite sure, if I can, that Laker hasn’t quietly slipped off the line somewhere between here and Dover. There’s one very peculiar thing,’ Plummer added confidentially. ‘Did you see the two women who were waiting to see a member of the firm at Liddle, Neal & Liddle’s?’
‘Yes. Laker’s mother and his fiancée, I was told.’
‘That’s right. Well, do you know that girl — Shaw her name is — has been shadowing me ever since I left the Bank. Of course I spotted it from the beginning — these amateurs don’t know how to follow anybody — and, as a matter of fact, she’s just inside that jeweller’s shop door behind me now, pretending to look at the things in the window. But it’s odd, isn’t it?’
‘Well,’ Hewitt replied, ‘of course it’s not a thing to be neglected. If you’ll look very carefully at the corner of Villiers Street, without appearing to stare, I think you will possibly observe some signs of Laker’s mother. She’s shadowing me.’
Plummer looked casually in the direction indicated, and then immediately turned his eyes in another direction.
‘I see her,’ he said; ‘she’s just taking a look round the corner. That’s a thing not to be be ignored. Of course, the Lakers’ house is being watched — we set a man on it at once, yesterday. But I’ll put some one on now to watch Miss Shaw’s place too. I’ll telephone through to Liddle’s — probably they’ll be able to say where it is. And the women themselves must be watched, too. As a matter of fact, I had a notion that Laker wasn’t alone in it. And it’s just possible, you know, that he has sent an accomplice off with his tourist ticket to lead us a dance while he looks after himself in another direction. Have you done anything?’
‘Well,’ Hewitt replied, with a faint reproduction of the secretive smile with which Plummer had met an inquiry of his earlier in the morning, ‘I’ve been to the station here, and I’ve found Laker’s umbrella in the lost property office.’
‘Oh! Then probably he has gone. I’ll bear that in mind, and perhaps have a word with the lost property man.’
Plummer made for the station and Hewitt for his office. He mounted the stairs and reached his door just as I myself, who had been disappointed in not finding him in, was leaving. I had called with the idea of taking Hewitt to lunch with me at my club, but he declined lunch. ‘I have an important case in hand,’ he said. ‘Look here, Brett. See this scrap of paper. You know the types of the different newspapers — which is this?’
He handed me a small piece of paper. It was part of a cutting containing an advertisement, which had been torn in half.
‘I think,’ I said, ‘this is from the Daily Chronicle, judging by the paper. It is plainly from the “agony column”, but all the papers use pretty much the same type for these advertisements, except the Times. If it were not torn I could tell you at once, because the Chronicle columns are rather narrow.’
‘Never mind — I’ll send for them all.’ He rang, and sent Kerrett for a copy of each morning paper of the previous day. Then he took from a large wardrobe cupboard a decent but well-worn and rather roughened tall hat. Also a coat a little worn and shiny on the collar. He exchanged these for his own hat and coat, and then substituted an old necktie for his own clean white one, and encased his legs in mud-spotted leggings. This done, he produced a very large and thick pocket-book, fastened by a broad elastic band, and said, ‘Well, what do you think of this? Will it do for Queen’s taxes, or sanitary inspection, or the gas, or the water-supply?’
‘Very well indeed, I should say,’ I replied. ‘What’s the case?’
‘Oh, I’ll tell you all about that when it’s over — no time now. Oh, here you are, Kerrett. By the bye, Kerrett, I’m going out presently by the back way. Wait for about ten minutes or a quarter of an hour after I am gone, and then just go across the road and speak to that lady in black, with the veil, who is waiting in that little foot-passage opposite. Say Mr Martin Hewitt sends his compliments, and he advises her not to wait, as he has already left his office by another door, and has been gone some little time. That’s all; it would be a pity to keep the poor woman waiting all day for nothing. Now the papers. Daily News, Standard, Telegraph, Chronicle— yes, here it is, in the Chronicle’
The whole advertisement read thus:
YOB. — H.R. Shop roast. You 1st. Then to-
night. O2. 2nd top 3rd L. No.197 red bl.
straight mon. One at a time.
‘What’s this,’ I asked, ‘a cryptogram?’
‘I’ll see,’ Hewitt answered. ‘But I won’t tell you anything about it till afterwards, so you get your lunch. Kerrett, bring the directory.’
This was all I actually saw of this case myself, and I have written the rest in its proper order from Hewitt’s information, as I have written some other cases entirely.
To resume at the point where, for the time, I lost sight of the matter. Hewitt left by the back way and stopped an empty cab as it passed. ‘Abney Park Cemetery’ was his direction to the driver. In little more than twenty minutes the cab was branching off down the Essex Road on its way to Stoke Newington, and in twenty minutes more Hewitt stopped it in Church Street, Stoke Newington. He walked through a street or two, and then down another, the houses of which he scanned carefully as he passed. Opposite one which stood by itself he stopped, and, making a pretence of consulting and arranging his large pocket-book, he took a good look at the house. It was rather larger, neater, and more pretentious than the others in the street, and it had a natty little coach-house just visible up the side entrance. There were red blinds hung with heavy lace in the front windows, and behind one of these blinds Hewitt was able to catch the glint of a heavy gas chandelier.
He stepped briskly up the front steps and knocked sharply at the door. ‘Mr Merston?’ he asked, pocket-book in hand, when a neat parlourmaid opened the door.
‘Yes.’
‘Ah!’ Hewitt stepped into the hall and pulled off his hat; ‘it’s only the meter. There’s been a deal of gas running away somewhere here, and I’m just looking to see if the meters are right. Where is it?’
The girl hesitated. ‘I’ll — I’ll ask master,’ she said.
‘Very