The Avenger | Page 8

whom the message came, and the sender does not seem to have doubted that if it was conveyed to Barnes he would obey the summons. Wrayson agrees to and does deliver it. That is to say, he writes it down and leaves it in the letter-box of Barnes door, Barnes not having yet returned. Now we begin to get mysterious. That communication from our friend here has not been discovered. It was not in the letter-box; it was not upon the person of the dead man. We cannot tell whether or not he ever received it. I believe that I am right so far?"
"Absolutely," Wrayson admitted.
"Our friend Wrayson, then," the Colonel continued, beaming upon his neighbour, "instead of going to bed like a sensible man, takes up a book and falls asleep in his easy-chair. He wakes up about three or four o'clock, and his attention is then attracted by the jingling of a hansom bell below. He looks out of window and sees a cab, both the driver and the occupant of which appear to be asleep. The circumstance striking him as somewhat unusual, he descends to the street and finds--well, rather more than he expected. He finds the cabman asleep, and his fare scientifically and effectually throttled by a piece of silken cord."
Wrayson turned to the waiter and ordered a liqueur brandy.
"Have one, you fellows?" he asked. "Good! Four, waiter."
He tossed his own off directly it arrived. His lips were pale, and the hand which raised the glass to his lips shook. Heneage alone, who was watching him through a little cloud of tobacco smoke, noticed this.
"Have you finished with me, Colonel?" Wrayson asked.
"Practically," the Colonel answered, smiling, "unless you can answer one of the three queries suggested by my resume. First, who killed Morris Barnes? Secondly, when was it done? Thirdly, where was it done? I have left out a possible fourth, why was it done? because, in this case, I think that the motive and the man are practically identical. I mean that if you discover one, you discover the other."
Heneage leaned across the table towards the Colonel.
"You are a magician, Colonel," he declared quietly. "I glanced through this case in the paper, and it did not even interest me. Since I have listened to you I have fallen under the spell of the mysterious. Have you any theories?"
The Colonel's face fell a little.
"Well, I am afraid not," he admitted regretfully. "To be perfectly interesting the affair certainly ought to present something more definite in the shape of a clue. You see, providing we accept the evidence of Wrayson and the cabman, and I suppose," he added, laying his hand affectionately upon Wrayson's shoulder, "we must, the actual murderer is a person absolutely unseen or unheard of by any one. If you are all really interested we will discuss it again in a week's time after the adjourned inquest."
"I, for one, shall look forward to it," Heneage remarked, glancing across towards Wrayson. "What about a pool?"
"I'm on," Wrayson declared, rising a little abruptly.
"And I," Mason assented.
"And I can't," the Colonel said regretfully. "I must go down to Balham and see poor Carlo Mallini I hear he's very queer."
The Colonel loved pool, and he hated a sick-room. The click of the billiard balls reached him as he descended the stairs, but he only sighed and set out manfully for Charing Cross. On the way he entered a fruiterer's shop and inquired the price of grapes. They were more than he expected, and he counted out the contents of his trousers pockets before purchasing.
"A little short of change," he remarked cheerfully. "Yes! all right, I'll take them."
He marched out, swinging a paper bag between his fingers, travelled third class to Balham, and sat for a couple of hours with the invalid whom he had come to see, a lonely Italian musician, to whom his coming meant more than all the medicine his doctor could prescribe. He talked to him glowingly of the success of his recent concert (more than a score of the tickets sold had been paid for secretly by the Colonel himself and his friends), prophesied great things for the future, and laughed away all the poor fellow's fears as to his condition. There were tears in his eyes as he walked to the station, for he had visited too many sick-beds to have much faith in his own cheerful words, and all the way back to London he was engaged in thinking out the best means of getting the musician sent back to his own country, Arrived at Charing Cross, he looked longingly towards the club, and ruefully at the contents of his pocket. Then with a sigh he turned into a little restaurant and dined for eighteen-pence.
CHAPTER IV
UNDER A CLOUD
Exactly one week later, six