He thanked her and prepared to go. She stopped him with an exclamation. She was bending over his tablets with her glass.
"These were not taken from the hands of a living man! Julian Clifford must be dead!"
"What an idea!" he scoffed.
"A true one! There's a lack of spring, of elasticity about them that's unmistakable. Julian Clifford dead! What a loss to the world! Was it in some accident?"
There was a pause. Mrs. Jansen's reputation was that of an absolutely trustworthy woman. Besides, her face vouched for her. Or rather, her aura. That immense, impalpable Something, woven of our thoughts, our desires, that surrounds each one of us, that never leaves us, that perhaps is most truly "us"—en Nefss, as the Arabs call it—having its own way of making itself felt, its own warnings, its own dislikes, attractions, and guarantees.
"I wanted you to help us identify a body," he said simply. "Apparently you have. I wonder if there is anything more you can tell me—about Mr. Clifford, I mean."
She interrupted him.
"That's no good with me,—I've seen your palms, remember—I mean that air of a child asking to be helped over the crossing. Besides, why are you here? You weren't in the least interested in your own character. You were keenly interested in those tablets. I don't think it's merely the identification"—her eyes widened— "has something—something criminal—happened to Mr. Clifford? Has he been—killed?" she asked in a low, horrified voice.
"And supposing something 'wrong' has happened to him, Mrs. Jansen?" He gave her back a long, steady stare. "Mind you, all this is in strictest confidence. I'm Chief Inspector Pointer of New Scotland Yard. Of the C.I.D. The whole of this conversation, of my inquiries, must be kept absolutely to yourself, just as the Yard will treat anything you tell me about Mr. Clifford as confidential. Why did the idea come so quickly to you that his death may be due to a crime? You have more to go on than merely my coming to see you."
She looked at him over her horn spectacles for all the world like a modern witch.
"Mr. Clifford came to see me himself a week ago last Thursday," she said finally. "He wanted to know whether I would look in his hands and tell him if any danger threatened him. He was kind enough to say that I had impressed him as truthful when I took the photographs of his hands for my book two years ago. I had only seen him that once before. In Cannes."
"And you?"
"I told him that that was out of my line. Nor could any one have answered that question for him. His hands only showed character and talents...That sort of thing. There are people whose hands do record events...His didn't. Events outside him didn't enter into Julian Clifford. What mattered to him came always from within. Death, for instance, wasn't marked on his palms. Death means very little to him. His personality was quite distinct from his body. With some people it is bound up in it. Even a toothache is marked on their palms."
"What did you tell him? May I know?"
"I told him just that. He seemed rather disappointed. He asked me to look again. 'I'm on the eve of something—well—important.' He hesitated before using that word. I thought he chose it finally rather as a cloak. I don't think 'important' was the word he would have used in writing."
"You think Clifford the man was not so honest as Clifford the writer?"
She did not reply for a moment. Then—
"I have an idea that he was undecided about something. Or perhaps hesitating before doing something would be a better word."
Again there was a silence.
"Is that all you can tell me about him?"
"Everything," she said, with a frank look into the detective-officer's face.
Pointer stared at his shoes.
"Mrs. Jansen, I wish you'd tell me Mr. Clifford's weak points—as you see them. Suppose something untoward has happened to him. Something that needs investigation. As a rule a man's good qualities don't lead to that necessity. Was there anything in Julian Clifford's character—as shown in his hands—that could have brought about, or led to, or explain—sudden death? Mind you, I ask this in strictest confidence."
She nodded gravely.
"In strictest confidence," she repeated, "nothing in his hands could explain any end other than a happy and honoured one. His was a fine character, noble and generous. He had faults, of course. There was a certain ruthlessness where his work was concerned. He would have sacrificed his all on that altar...unconsciously or even consciously."
Still Pointer looked at his shoes.
"Was he a man of high morality, would you say?"
"I don't think he had ever been tempted. He was fastidious by temperament, and his wealth made high standards fairly easy." Mrs. Jansen rose. "And that, Mr. Chief Inspector, is all I can tell you. Mr. Clifford sat a moment there in that chair you're in, peering at his own palms. He was very short-sighted. Then he looked at me half in vexation as he got up. 'What did the ancients do when the oracle wouldn't oracle?' And with that he said good-bye."
"Can I call upon you, in case of need, to identify the hands from which I took these wax impressions as those of Julian Clifford?" Pointer asked, rising.
"I will identify them any time, any where, as his Hands are to me what faces are to most people—the things I go by."
Pointer paid the moderate fees and drove off. His whole being was in a turmoil under his quiet exterior. Julian Clifford, the great author, younger brother of Sir Edward Clifford of the Foreign Office, to be that headless trunk!
Back at Scotland Yard, within half an hour, the plates in Mrs. Jansen's book were enlarged and compared with quickly-taken photographs of the dead man's palms. Again they seemed to be identical. Every whorl and loop, which showed in both tallied.
Pointer meanwhile looked up Clifford's town address. It was given as Thornbush, Hampstead. A moment more, and he was asking over the telephone if he could speak to Mr. Clifford—Mr. Julian Clifford.
"Mr. Clifford is away, sir," a servant's voice answered.
"Away!" Pointer's tone marked incredulous surprise. "But he had an appointment with the Home Secretary at eleven!"
"He's not here, sir."
"But surely he gave you a message, or a letter when he left? It's Mr. Marbury of the Home Office who is speaking."
Pointer's tone suggested that Mr. Marbury was not accustomed to be slighted.
"I'll inquire, sir," a crushed voice replied.
There was a pause, then the voice came again, very apologetically.
"No, sir. No message was left. Mr. Clifford left early this morning before any one was up."
"Most extraordinary!" Mr. Marbury said stiffly. "I think I'll call and see some one about the matter." He hung up.
So Julian Clifford was supposed to have left his home before any one was up. That probably meant that he had not been seen since last night. Since last night, when a murder had been committed in Heath Mansions.
What about Julian Clifford's brother! He might have some information. But an inquiry at the Foreign Office for Sir Edward told Pointer that the brother was not in town. A few questions to his valet in Pont Street added the information that Sir Edward had left town yesterday, Monday, evening after dining with his brother, Mr. Julian Clifford, at the latter's house. He had gone to his cottage in Surrey, a peaceful spot where the telephone was not.
Pointer opened his Who's Who. He reviewed the well-known facts of the novelist and playwright's life. Clifford was a little under forty-five, the younger son of the late Sir James Clifford of Clifford's Bank, long since incorporated in one of the big general banks;