Chapter Twenty Three. The Unexpected Happens.

The shrewd officer seated at the table with me, a pen in his hand, heard my narrative to the end, now and then making brief memoranda.

Presently he exclaimed:

“Would you kindly excuse me? I’d like another gentleman to hear this story.” And he rose and left.

A few minutes later he returned with a rather taller, clean-shaven man, slightly younger, who had on a dark overcoat and carried a silk hat in his hand.

“This is Mr Holford,” said the first officer, introducing me. “He’s just told me a very remarkable story, which I’d like you to hear for a moment.”

Then, turning to me, he asked me to repeat briefly what I had alleged.

The new-comer, seating himself, listened attentively to every word which fell from my lips. I noticed that he exchanged curious glances with his brother officer.

“Your main reason, then, for telling us this story is in order to compel those responsible for your wife’s absence to reveal her whereabouts, I take it?” asked the younger man.

“Exactly.”

“The false telegram was dispatched from Turin, eh?”

“Yes. Cannot you communicate with the Italian police concerning it?”

“And pray what good would result?” he queried. “After long delay we might perchance get the original of the telegram, but I don’t see that that would assist us very far. When people send bogus messages they generally disguise their handwriting.”

“Well, I leave it to you to take what steps you like to assist me,” I said. “My sole object is to find my lost wife.”

“Naturally, my dear sir,” observed the officer. “We’ll first take down your statement in writing.” And then the man I had first seen wrote at my dictation a brief summary of the mysterious death of Professor Greer and its attendant complications and my suspicion of Kershaw Kirk.

“Well, we’ll place this before the Commissioner to-day. Perhaps you’ll call to-morrow; say about this time. We will then let you know our opinion and our intentions.”

With that I was compelled to be satisfied, and I left the waiting-room full of hope that by that bold move of mine I might gain knowledge of the whereabouts of my well-beloved.

How I existed throughout that day I cannot tell. I tried to attend to my business, but in vain. I was wondering what action was being taken by my sinister-faced neighbour who lived in Whitehall Court under another name, and who seemed to possess a dual personality.

At last the hour came when again I turned the car into Scotland Yard, and once more was ushered upstairs into that bare waiting-room wherein so many stories of crime are related.

Presently, after a lengthy wait, the two officers entered together and greeted me.

“Well,” commenced the elder of the pair with some slight hesitation, “we’ve placed your statement before the Commissioner, Mr Holford, and he has very carefully considered it. He has, however, decided that it is not a matter for our department.”

“What?” I gasped. “A man can be foully done to death here in London, and yet the police refuse to believe the story of an honest man—a man who is a witness!”

“We do not doubt you in the least degree, Mr Holford,” the other assured me, speaking very quietly.

“But you do!” I exclaimed in quick anger. “I’ve told you that a crime has been perpetrated.”

“My dear sir,” said the officer, “we get many startling stories told here almost hourly, and if we inquired into the truth of them all, why, we’d require a department as big as the whole of Whitehall.”

“What I told you yesterday is so strange and extraordinary that you believe I’m a madman,” I said. “I see it in your faces.”

“Excuse me, but that is not the point,” he protested. “We are only officers, Mr Holford. We are not the commander. The chief has given his decision, and we are compelled to obey, however much we may regret our inaction.”

“So you refuse your aid in assisting me to find my wife?”

“No. If we can help you to discover Mrs Holford, we willingly will. Perhaps you’ll kindly give us her description, and we’ll at once circulate it through all our channels, both here and abroad. But,” added the man, “I must first tell you that we can hold out very little hope. The number of missing wives reported to us, both here at headquarters and at the various local stations in the metropolitan area, is sometimes dozens in a day. Most of the ladies have, we find on inquiry, gone away of their own accord.”

“But this case is different. My wife has not!” I asserted. “She has been enticed away by a telegram purporting to come from me.”

“And that’s really nothing unusual. We have heard of ladies arranging with other people to send urgent messages in the names of their husbands. It is an easy way of escape sometimes.” And he smiled rather grimly.

“Then, to put it plainly, I’ve nothing to hope for from you?” I snapped.

“Very little, I fear, sir.”

“And this is our police system which was only recently so highly commended by the Royal Commission of Inquiry!” I blurted forth. “It’s a scandal!”

“It is not for us to make any comment, my dear Mr Holford,” said the elder of the two officers. “The Commissioner himself decides what action we take upon information we may receive. I dare say,” he added, “our decision in this case does appear to you somewhat strange, but—well, I may as well point out that there is a special feature in it which does not appear to you—an outsider.”

“What special feature can there be, pray? A well-known man has been assassinated. Surely, therefore, it is the duty of the police to stir themselves and make every inquiry!”

“We have only your statement for that. As far as we or the public are aware, Professor Greer is travelling somewhere on the Continent.”

“But, if you disbelieve me, go to Kershaw Kirk, in Whitehall Court, or to the Professor’s daughter down at Broadstairs, or to Pietro Merli, who keeps a newsagent’s in the Euston Road. Each of these persons knows the truth, and would speak—if compelled.”

“The Commissioner has had all those names before him, but in face of that he has decided not to enter into this matter. His decision,” said the officer, “is irrevocable.”

“Then our police system is a perfect farce!” I cried. “No wonder, indeed, we have in London a host of undiscovered crimes! The man Kirk laughed at you here as blunderers!” I added.

But the pair only exchanged glances and grinned, causing me increased anger.

“In any other city but London the police would, upon my information, at once institute inquiry!” I declared. “I’m a tax-payer, and am entitled to assistance and protection.”

“We have already offered to assist you to discover the whereabouts of Mrs Holford,” the elder man pointed out politely.

“Then inquire of this man Kirk, or Seymour, as he calls himself, in Whitehall Court,” I said. “He can tell you where she is—if he chooses.”

“You suspect him of having a hand in her disappearance? Why?” inquired the other detective officer.

I related clearly and succinctly the facts upon which my belief was based and of the description given of my wife’s companion by the hotel-manager in Florence.

The officer slowly shook his head.

“That’s scarcely conclusive, is it? The description is but a vague one, after all.”

“Well,” I said bitterly as I rose, “if you refuse to assist me, I must, I suppose, seek redress elsewhere. May I see the Commissioner myself?”

“You can make formal application, if you like. But I don’t expect he will see you. He has already fully considered the matter.” And that was all the satisfaction accorded me.

“Then I’ll do something!” I cried. “I’ll get a question asked in the House. It’s a scandal that, with Professor Greer killed in his own home, you refuse to bestir yourselves. After all, it seems quite true, as has been recently alleged, that the police are nowadays so fully occupied in regulating the speed of motor-cars that they have no time for the investigation of crime.”

I noticed that at my threat to have a question asked in the House, one of the officers pulled a rather wry face. The Metropolitan Police were not fond, I knew, of questions being put about them. I chanced to know rather intimately a member for a country division, though to get the question put would necessitate my explaining the whole affair.

Yet was not Mabel’s liberty—nay, perhaps her very life—at stake?

“You’ve told us very little regarding this friend of yours, Mr Kershaw Kirk, whom you appear to suspect so strongly,” the younger of the two men remarked at last. “Who is he?”

“An adventurer,” I replied quickly. “I have no doubt whatever upon that point.”

The man pursed his lips dubiously.

“May it not be that you are somewhat prejudiced against him?” he ventured to suggest.

“No. He was in the house at the time when the Professor’s body was cremated in his own furnace. If you went to Sussex Place you would probably discover some remains among the ashes.”

“Do you allege, then, that you were an actual witness of the cremation?” asked the officer.

“No; I found him in the house.”

“And, later on, you discovered the furnace alight, eh?”

“Yes.”

“Then it is only a surmise on your part, after all, my dear sir,” remarked the detective, twisting a pen between his fingers as his dark eyes were fixed upon mine. “The actual evidence is really nil. That is just the view taken by the Commissioner.”

“But my wife is in the hands of the assassins,” I cried. “You can’t deny that!”

“Is there any actual, evidence of it? None, as far as we can see,” he declared. “Would it not be natural for your wife, on failing to find you in Florence, either to wire to her sister at home or to return home at once? She did neither, which only goes far to prove that she did not desire to return to London.”

“You suggest that she has purposely left me?” I cried, staring at the man in a frenzy of angry resentment.

“I suggest nothing, Mr Holford. Pray don’t misunderstand me. I merely put before you the facts in order to obtain a logical conclusion. Only one can be arrived at—she had some motive for not returning to her home. If she had, then how are we to find her? She would, no doubt, purposely cover her tracks.”

“But she was with that man, the man who—”

“And that just bears out my argument,” interrupted the detective.

“But may she not have been prevented from sending any message home?” I suggested, though that very point he had made had, I confess, been the one which had continually obsessed me.

Both the detectives shook their heads.

“No,” replied the elder of the two. “We are both agreed, as the Commissioner also believes, that your wife would not be held a prisoner. Criminals do not hold women prisoners nowadays, except in works of fiction. No,” he added, “depend upon it, Mr Holford, when you discover the truth, you will find that your wife was acquainted with one or other of these friends of yours, and that her disappearance was part of a plan.”

The story of the message received by Mabel while I was in Scotland flashed across my mind. I recollected all that Gwen had so guardedly related to me.

But I stirred myself quickly. No, a thousand times no! I would never believe evil of Mabel before I had absolute proof in black and white. The mystery of her disappearance was as great and inexplicable as the problem of who killed Professor Greer?