Once the pistol fired. Jeff felt a sharp twitch of pain, exquisite, unbearable, and fell forward on his knees.
Twice he endeavoured to rise, then with a groan fell in a huddled heap, his head in the empty fireplace.
Chapter XIV
The doors and the walls of the private diningrooms were almost soundproof. No stir followed the shot. In the hall outside, the porter lifted his head and listened.
“What was that?” he asked the waiting elevator man.
“Didn’t hear anything,” said the other laconically. “Somebody slammed a door.”
“Maybe,” said the porter, and went back to his book. He was filling in the names of that night’s visitors, an indispensable record in such a club, and he was filling them in with pencil, an equally necessary act of caution, for sometimes the club members desired a quick expungement of this evidence.
In Room 13 silence reigned. A thin blue cloud floated to the ceiling; the door opened a little farther, and Johnny Gray came in, his right hand in his overcoat pocket.
Slowly he crossed the room to where the huddled figure lay, and, stooping, turned it upon its back. Then, after a brief scrutiny, his quick hands went through the man’s pockets. He found something, carried to it the light, read with a frown and pushed the paper into his own pocket. Going out, he closed the door carefully behind him and strolled back to the hall.
“Not staying, Captain?” asked the porter in surprise.
“No, nobody I know here. Queer how the membership changes.”
The man on duty was too well trained to ask inconvenient questions.
“Excuse me. Captain.” He went over to Johnny and bent down. “You’ve got some blood on your cuff.”
He took out his handkerchief and wiped the stain clean. Then his frowning eyes met the young man’s.
“Anything wrong, Captain?”
“Nothing that I can tell you about,” said Johnny; “Good night.”
“Good night, sir,” said the porter.
He stood by his desk, looking hard at the glass doors of the elevator, heard the rattle of the gate as it opened, and the whine of the lift as it rose again.
“Just stay here, and don’t answer any rings till I come back,” he said.
He hurried along the corridor into the side passage and, coming to No. 13, knocked. There was no answer. He turned the handle. One glance told him all he wanted to know. Gently he closed the door and hurried back to the telephone on his desk.
Before he raised the receiver he called the gaping lift-boy.
“Go to all the rooms, and say a murder has been committed. Get everybody out.”
He was still clasping the telephone with damp hands when the last frightened guest crowded into the elevator, then:
“Highlow Club speaking. Is that the Charing Cross Hospital?… I want an ambulance here… Yes, 38, Boburn Street… There’s been an accident.”
He rung off and called another number.
“Highlow Club. Is that the police station?… It’s the porter at the Highlow Club speaking, sir. One of our members has shot himself.”
He put down the instrument and turned his face to the scared elevator man who had returned to the high level. At the end of the passage stood a crowd of worried waiters.
“Benny,” he said, “Captain Gray hasn’t been here tonight. You understand? Captain – Gray – has – not – been – here – tonight.”
The guest-book was open on the desk. He took his pencil and wrote, on the line where Johnny Gray’s name should have been, “Mr. William Brown of Toronto.”
Chapter XV
The last of the guests had escaped, when the police came, and, simultaneously with the ambulance, Divisional-Inspector Craig, who had happened to be making a call in the neighbourhood. The doctor who came with the ambulance made a brief examination.
“He is not dead, though he may be before he reaches hospital,” he said.
“Is it a case of suicide?”
The doctor shook his head.
“Suicides do not, as a rule, shoot themselves under the right shoulder-blade. It would be a difficult operation: try it yourself. I should say he’d been shot from the open doorway.”
He applied a rough first dressing, and Jeffrey was carried into the elevator. In the bottom passage a stretcher was prepared, and upon this he was laid, and, covered with a blanket, carried through the crowd which had assembled at the entrance.
“Murder, or attempted murder, as the case may be,” said Craig. “Someone has tipped off the guests. You, I suppose, Stevens? Let me see your book.”
The inspector ran his finger down the list, and stopped at Room 13.
“Mr. William Brown of Toronto, Who is Mr. Brown of Toronto?”
“I don’t know, sir. He engaged a room by telephone, I didn’t see him go.”
“That old fire-escape of yours still working?” asked Craig sardonically. “Anybody else been here? Who is the wounded man? His face seemed familiar to me.”
“Major Floyd, sir.”
“Who?” asked Craig sharply. “Impossible! Major Floyd is—” It was Floyd! He remembered now. Floyd, with whom he had sat that day – that happily-married man!
“What was he doing here?” he asked. “Now, spill it, Stevens, unless you want to get yourself into pretty bad trouble.”
“I’ve spilled all I know, sir,” said Stevens doggedly. “It was Major Floyd.”
And then an inspiration came to him.
“If you want to know who it was, it was Jeff Legge. Floyd’s his fancy name.”
“Who?”
Craig had had many shocks in his life, but, this was the greatest he had had for years.
“Jeff Legge? Old Legge’s son?”
Stevens nodded.
“Nobody knows that but a couple of us,” he said. “Jeff doesn’t work in the light.”
The officer nodded slowly.
“I’ve never seen him,” he admitted. “I knew Legge had a son, but I didn’t know he was running crook. I thought he was a bit of a boy.”
“He’s some boy, let me tell you!” said Stevens.
Craig sat down, his chin in his hands.
“Mrs. Floyd will have to be told. Good God! Peter Kane’s daughter! Peter didn’t know that he’d married her to Legge’s son?”
“I don’t know whether he knew or not,” said Stevens, “but if I know old Peter, he’d as soon know that she’d gone to the devil as marry her to a son of Emanuel Legge’s. I’m squeaking in a way,” he said apologetically, “but you’ve got