ought to know better than to go gadding about with actresses."
"But he is interested in the theater – he is quite an authority on French comedy."
"He can tackle French tragedy now – he is up to the neck in this one."
"You still cling to the shrieking housemaid – to her ravings, I mean?"
"Perhaps I should have mentioned it sooner, sir, but I have come across a taxicab driver who picked up a gentleman uncommonly like Mr. Osborne at 7.20 p.m. on Tuesday, and drove him from the corner of Berkeley Street to Knightsbridge, waited there nearly fifteen minutes, and brought him back again to Berkeley Street."
The Chief Inspector came as near being startled as is permissible in Scotland Yard.
"That is a very serious statement," he said quietly, wheeling round in his chair and scrutinizing his subordinate's lean face with eyes more wide-open than ever, if that were possible. "It is tantamount to saying that some person resembling Mr. Osborne hired a cab outside the Ritz Hotel, was taken to Feldisham Mansions at the very hour Miss de Bercy was murdered, and returned to the Ritz in the same vehicle."
"Exactly so," and Clarke pursed his thin lips meaningly.
"So, then, you have discovered something?"
Mr. Winter's tone had suddenly become dryly official, and the other man, fearing a reprimand, added:
"I admit, sir, I ought to have told you sooner, but I don't want to make too much of the incident. The taxicab chauffeur does not know Mr. Rupert Osborne by sight, and I took good care not to mention the name. The unknown was dressed like Mr. Osborne, and looked like him – that is all."
"Who is the driver?"
"William Campbell – cab number X L 4001. I have hired him to-morrow morning from ten o'clock, and then he will have an opportunity of seeing Mr. Osborne – "
"Meet me here at 9.30, and I will keep the appointment for you. Until – until I make other arrangements, I intend to take this Feldisham Mansions affair into my own hands. Of course, I should have been delighted to leave it in your charge, but during the past hour something of vastly greater importance has turned up, and I want you to tackle it immediately."
"Something more important than a society murder?" Clarke could not help saying.
"Yes. You know that the Tsar comes to London from Windsor to-morrow? Well, read this," and Winter, with the impressive air of one who communicates a state secret, handed the Paris message.
"Ah!" muttered Clarke, gloating over the word "Anarchists."
"Now you understand," murmured Winter darkly. "Unfortunately these men are far too well acquainted with me to render it advisable that I should shadow them. So I shall accompany you to Charing Cross, point them out, and leave them to you. A live monarch is of more account than a dead actress, so you see now what confidence I have in you, Mr. Clarke."
Clarke's sallow cheeks flushed a little. Winter might be a genial chief, but he seldom praised so openly.
"I quite recognize that, sir," he said. "Of course, I am sorry to drop out of this murder case. It has points, first-rate points. I haven't told you yet about the stone."
"Why – what stone?"
"The stone that did for Miss de Bercy. The flat was not thoroughly searched last night, but this morning I examined every inch of it, and under the piano I found – this."
He produced from a pocket something wrapped in a handkerchief. Unfolding the linen, he rose and placed on the blotting-pad, under the strong light of a shaded lamp, one of those flat stones which the archeologist calls "celts," or "flint ax-heads." Indeed, no expert eye was needed to determine its character. The cutting edge formed a perfect curve; two deep indentations showed how it had been bound on to a handle of bone or wood. At the broadest part it measured fully four inches, its length the same, thickness about three-quarters of an inch. That it was a genuine neolithic flint could not be questioned. A modern lapidary might contrive to chip a flint into the same shape, but could not impart that curious bloom which apparently exudes from the heart of the stone during its thousands of centuries of rest in prehistoric cave or village mound. This specimen showed the gloss of antiquity on each smooth facet.
But it showed more. When used in war or the chase by the fearsome being who first fashioned it to serve his savage needs, it must often have borne a grisly tint, and now again each side of the strangely sharp edge was smeared with grewsome daubs, while some black hairs clung to the dried clots which clustered on the irregular surfaces.
Sentiment finds little room in the retreat of a Chief Inspector, so Winter whistled softly when he set eyes on this weird token of a crime.
"By gad!" he cried, "in my time at the Yard I've seen many queer instruments of butchery – ranging from a crusader's mace to the strings of a bass fiddle – but this beats the lot."
"It must have come out of some museum," said the other.
"It suggests a tragedy of the British Association," mused Winter aloud.
"It ought to supply a first-rate clew, anyhow," said Clarke.
"Oh, it does; it must. If only – "
Winter checked himself on the very lip of indiscretion, for Clarke detested Furneaux. He consulted his watch.
"We must be off now," he said briskly. "Leave the stone with me, and while we are walking to Charing Cross I can give you a few pointers about these Anarchist pests. Once they are comfortably boxed up in some café in Old Compton Street you can come away safely for the night, and pick them up again about midday to-morrow. They are absolutely harm – I mean they cannot do any harm until the Tsar arrives. From that moment you must stick to them like a limpet to a rock; I will arrange for a man to relieve you in the evening, nor shall I forget to give your name to the Embassy people when they begin to scatter diamond pins around."
When he meant to act a part, Winter was an excellent comedian, and soon Clarke was prowling at the heels of those redoubtables, Antoine Descartes and Émile Janoc.
Once Clarke was safely shelved, Winter called the first taxicab he met and was driven to Feldisham Mansions. An unerring instinct had warned him at once that the murder of the actress was no ordinary crime; but Clarke had happened to be on duty when the report of it reached the Yard a few minutes after eight o'clock the previous evening, and Winter had bewailed the mischance which deprived him of the services of Furneaux, the one man to whom he could have left the inquiry with confidence.
The very simplicity of the affair was baffling. Mademoiselle Rose de Bercy was the leading lady in a company of artistes, largely recruited from the Comédie Française, which had played a short season in London during September of the past year. She did not accompany the others when they returned to Paris, but remained, to become a popular figure in London society, and was soon in great demand for her contes drôles at private parties. She was now often to be seen in the company of Mr. Rupert Osborne, a young American millionaire, whose tastes ordinarily followed a less frivolous bent than he showed in seeking the society of an undeniably chic and sprightly Frenchwoman. It had been rumored that the two would be married before the close of the summer, and color was lent to the statement by the lady's withdrawal from professional engagements.
So far as Winter's information went, this was the position of affairs until a quarter to eight on the night of the first Tuesday in July. At that hour, Mademoiselle de Bercy's housemaid either entered or peered into her mistress's drawing-room, and saw her lifeless body stretched on the floor. Shrieking, the girl fled out into the lobby and down a flight of stairs to the hall-porter's little office, which adjoined the elevator. By chance, the man had just collected the letters from the boxes on each of the six floors of the block of flats, and had gone to the post; Mademoiselle de Bercy's personal maid and her cook, having obtained permission to visit an open-air exhibition, had, it seemed, been absent since six o'clock; the opposite flat on the same story was closed, the tenants being at the seaside; and the distraught housemaid, pursued by phantoms, forthwith yielded to the strain, so that the hall-porter, on his return, found her lying across the threshold of his den.
He summoned his wife from the basement,