Part 7 (1/2)

”And I in my corsets!” Maggie groaned.

They were both silent for a moment. Then Nigel moved towards the door and opened it.

”Come downstairs into the library, will you, Maggie?” he begged. ”Let us go in for a little reconstruction.”

They found Brookes in the hall and took him with them. The blinds in the room had never been raised, and there was still that nameless atmosphere which lingers for long in an apartment which has become a.s.sociated with tragedy. Instinctively they all moved quietly and spoke in hushed voices. Nigel sat in the chair where his uncle had been found dead and made a mental effort to reconstruct the events which must have immediately preceded the tragedy.

”I know that this was all thrashed out at the inquest, Brookes,” he said, ”but I want you to tell me once more. You see how far it is from this table to the door. My uncle must have had abundant warning of any one approaching. Was there no other way by which any one could have entered the room?”

”There was, your lords.h.i.+p,” the man replied, ”and I have regretted several times since that I did not mention it at the inquest. The cleaners were here on the morning of that day, and the window at the farther end of the room was unfastened--I even believe that it was open.”

Nigel rose and examined the window in question. It was almost flush with the ground, and although there were iron railings separating it from the street, a little gate opening from the area entrance made ingress not only possible but easy. Nigel returned to his chair.

”I can't understand this not having been mentioned at the inquest, Brookes,” he said.

”I was waiting for the question to be asked, your lords.h.i.+p. It was perfectly clear to every one there, if your lords.h.i.+p will excuse my saying so, that both the coroner and the police seemed to have made up their minds that it was a case of suicide.”

Nigel nodded.

”I had the same idea with reference to the coroner, at any rate, Brookes,” he said. ”So long as the verdict was returned in the form it was, I am not sure that it was not better so.”

He dismissed the man with a little nod and sat turning over the code books which still stood upon the table.

”You and I, at any rate, Maggie, know the truth,” he said, ”and so long as we can get no help from the proper quarters, I think that we should do better to let the matter remain as it is. We don't want to direct people's attention to us. We want to lull suspicion so far as we can, to be free to watch the three.”

The telephone bell rang, and as Nigel moved his arm to take off the receiver, he knocked over one of the black, morocco-bound code books, A sheet of paper with a few words upon it came fluttering to the ground.

Maggie picked it up, glanced at it carelessly at first and then with interest.

”Nigel,” she exclaimed, ”you see whose handwriting this is? Could it be part of the decoded dispatch?”

The telephone enquiry had been unimportant. Nigel pushed the instrument away. They both looked eagerly at the page of ma.n.u.script paper. It was numbered ”8” at the top, and the few words written upon it in Lord Dorminster's writing were obviously the continuation of a paragraph:

The name of the middle one, then, of the three secret cities, into which at all costs some one must find his way, is Kroten, and the telephone number which is all the clue I have been able to get, up to the present, to the London end of the affair, is Mayfair 146.

”This is just where he got to in the decoding!” Nigel declared. ”I wonder whether it's any use looking for the rest.”

They searched through every page of the heavy code books in vain. Then they returned to their study of the single page. Nigel dragged down an atlas and studied it.

”Kroten,” he muttered. ”Here it is,--a small place about six hundred miles from Petrograd, apparently the centre of a barren, swampy district, population thirty thousand, birth rate declining, industries nil. Cheerful sort of spot it seems!”

”I have more luck than you!” Maggie cried, her finger tracing out a line in the open telephone book. ”Look!”

Nigel glanced over her shoulder and read the entry to which she was pointing:

”_Immelan Oscar, 13 Clarges Street, W. Mayfair 146._”

CHAPTER VI