can’t say, I’m sure. He met me here for dinner at seven and has been here since.’
He hung up the receiver viciously. He had not expected to have to lie to Grell’s fiancée when he had promised not to disclose his friend’s absence from the club. It was too bad of Grell. His eye met the clock, and with a start he realised that it was a few minutes to eleven o’clock. Grell had been gone an hour and a half.
‘Queer chap,’ he murmured to himself, as he lit a fresh cigar and selected a comfortable chair in the deserted smoking-room. ‘He’s certainly in love with her all right, but it’s strange that he should have used me to put her off tonight like that. Wonder what it means.’
Two hours later a wild-eyed, breathless servant, bareheaded in the pouring rain, was stammering incoherently to a police-constable in Grosvenor Gardens that Mr Robert Grell had been found murdered in his study.
THE shattering ring of the telephone awoke Heldon Foyle with a start. There was only one place from which he was likely to be rung up at one o’clock in the morning, and he was reaching for his clothes with one hand even while he answered.
‘That you, sir?’…The voice at the other end was tremulous and excited. ‘This is the Yard speaking—Flack. Mr Grell, the American explorer, has been killed—murdered…yes…at his house in Grosvenor Gardens. The butler found him.…’
When a man has passed thirty years in the service of the Criminal Investigation Department at New Scotland Yard his nerves are pretty well shock-proof. Few emergencies can shake him—not even the murder of so distinguished a man as Robert Grell. Heldon Foyle gave a momentary gasp, and then wasted no further time in astonishment. There were certain obvious things to be done at once. For, up to a point, the science of detection is merely a matter of routine. He flung back his orders curtly and concisely.
‘Right. I’m coming straight down. I suppose the local division inspector is on it. Send for Chief Inspector Green and Inspector Waverley, and let the finger-print people know. I shall want one of their best men. Let one of our photographers go to the house and wait for me. Send a messenger to Professor Harding, and telephone to the assistant commissioner. Tell any of the people who are at the house not to touch anything and to detain everyone there. And Flack—Flack. Not a word to the newspaper men. We don’t want any leakage yet.’
He hung up the receiver and began to dress hurriedly, but methodically. He was a methodical man. Resolutely he put from his mind all thoughts of the murder. No good would come of spinning theories until he had all the available facts.
For ten years Heldon Foyle had been the actual executive chief of the Criminal Investigation Department. He rarely wore a dressing-gown and never played the violin. But he had a fine taste in cigars, and was as well-dressed a man as might be found between Temple Bar and Hyde Park Corner. He did not wear policemen’s boots, nor, for the matter of that, would he have allowed any of the six hundred odd men who were under his control to wear them. He would have passed without remark in a crowd of West-end clubmen. It is an aim of the good detective to fit his surroundings, whether they be in Kensington or the Whitechapel Road. A suggestion of immense strength was in his broad shoulders and deep chest. His square, strong face and heavy jaw was redeemed from sternness by a twinkle of humour in the eyes. That same sense of humour had often saved him from making mistakes, although it is not a popular attribute of story-book detectives. His carefully kept brown moustache was daintily upturned at the ends. There was grim tenacity written all over the man, but none but his intimates knew how it was wedded to pliant resource and fertile invention.
Down a quiet street a motor-car throbbed its way and stopped before the door of his quiet suburban home. It had been sent from Scotland Yard.
‘Don’t worry about speed limits,’ he said quietly as he stepped in. ‘Refer anyone to me who tries to stop you. Get to Grosvenor Gardens as quickly as you can.’
The driver touched his hat, and the car leapt forward with a jerk. A man with tenderer nerves than Foyle would have found it a startling journey. They swept round corners almost on two wheels, skidded on the greasy roads, and once narrowly escaped running down one of London’s outcasts who was shuffling across the road with the painful shamble that seems to be the hallmark of beggars and tramps. Few, save policemen on night duty, were about to mark their wild career.
As they drew up before the pillared portico of the great house in Grosvenor Gardens a couple of policemen moved out of the shadow of the railing and saluted.
Foyle nodded and walked up the steps. The door had flown open before he touched the bell, and a lanky man with slightly bent shoulders was outlined in the radiant glow of the electric light. It was Bolt, the divisional detective inspector, a quiet, grave man who, save on exceptional occasions, was with his staff responsible for the investigation of all crime in his district.
‘You’re the first to come, sir,’ he said in a quiet, melancholy tone. ‘It’s a terrible job, this.’
He spoke professionally. Living as they do in an atmosphere of crime, always among major and minor tragedies, C.I.D. men—official detectives prefer the term—are forced to view their work objectively, like doctors and journalists. All murders are terrible—as murders. A detective cannot allow his sympathies or sensibility to pain or grief to hamper him in his work. In Bolt’s sense the case was terrible because it was difficult to investigate; because, unless the perpetrators were discovered and arrested, discredit would be brought upon the service and glaring contents-bills declare the inefficiency of the department to the world. The C.I.D. is very jealous of its reputation.
‘Yes,’ agreed Foyle. ‘Where is the butler? He found the body, I’m told. Fetch him into some room where I can talk to him.’
The butler, a middle-aged man, nervous, white-faced and half-distracted, was brought into a little sitting-room. His eyes moved restlessly to and from the detective: his fingers were twitching uneasily.
Foyle shot one swift appraising glance at him. Then he nodded to a chair.
‘Sit down, my man,’ he said, and his voice was silky and smooth. ‘Get him a drink, Bolt. He’ll feel better after that. Now, what’s your name?—Wills?—Pull yourself together. There’s nothing to be alarmed about. Just take your own time and tell us all about it.’
There was no hint of officialdom in his manner. It was the sympathetic attitude of one friend towards another. Wills gulped down a strong mixture of brandy and soda which Bolt held out to him, and a tinge of colour returned to his pale cheeks.
‘It was awful, sir—awful,’ he said shakily. ‘Mr Grell came in shortly before ten, and left word that if a lady came to see him she was to be brought straight into his study. She drove up in a motor-car a few minutes afterwards and went up to him.’
‘What was her name? What was she like?’ interrupted Bolt. Foyle held up his hand warningly to his subordinate.
Wills quivered all over, and words forsook him for a moment. Then he went on—
‘I—I don’t know. Ivan, Mr Grell’s valet, let her in. I saw her pass through the hall. She was tall and slim, but she wore a heavy veil, so I didn’t see her face. I don’t know when she left, but I went up to the study at one o’clock to ask if anything was needed before I went to bed. I could get no answer, although I knocked loudly two or three times; so I opened the door. My God! I—’
He flung his hands over his eyes and collapsed in an infantile paroxysm of tears.
Foyle rose and touched him gently on the shoulder. ‘Yes, then?’
‘The room was only dimly lit, sir, and I could see that he was lying on the couch, rather awkwardly, his face turned from me. I thought he might have dozed off, and I went into the room and touched him on the shoulder. My hand came away wet!’ His voice rose to a scream. ‘It was blood—blood everywhere—and