He was one of many thousands who believed it implicitly. He was one of twelve who understood the madness of the dead Spanish Captain.
He saw, too, villainy behind it all; the greed of gold that had sent a gallant ship to the bottom, that had brought death and mutilation in most horrible form to brave men.
Silinski had slipped through his fingers — Silinski, arch-agent of the Nine.
The house in St. John Street had been raided. In a little room on the top floor there was evidence that an instrument of some considerable size had been hastily dismantled. Broken ends of wire were hanging from the wall, and one other room on the same floor was packed with storage batteries. Pursuing their investigations, the detectives ascended to the roof through a trap door. Here was the flagstaff and the arrangement for hoisting the wires. Apparently, night was usually chosen for the reception and dispatch of messages. By night, the taut strands of wire would not attract attention. Only in cases of extremest urgency were they employed in daylight.
Such an occasion had been that when T.B. had interviewed Silinski. He understood now why the Pole had talked so loudly. It was to drown the peculiar sound of a wireless instrument at work.
Silinski was gone — vanished, in spite of the fact that every railway terminus in London had been watched, every ocean-going passenger scrutinized.
Now, on top of his disappearance came the Castilia disaster with the irresponsible public of two nations howling for a scapegoat. T.B. Smith attended a specially convened meeting of Ministers in Downing Street and related all that he knew.
“Give me two days,” he said, “and you may publish the whole of the facts. But to show our hand now would be disastrous. The police of every city are engaged in tracking down the wireless stations. There is one in every capital, of that much we are sure. To get the whole gang, however, I must find out where they are operating from.”
“Is that possible?” asked the grave Prime Minister.
“Absolutely, sir,” said T.B.
In the end they agreed.
A more difficult man to persuade was the editor of the London Morning Journal.
“I have got the story, why not let me publish?” was a not unnatural request.
“In two days you shall have the complete story; what I am anxious to avoid is anything in the nature of to-be-continued-in-our-next! I want the whole thing rounded off and finished for good.”
Reluctantly, the editor agreed.
He had two days to get the “book”; this code which the unfortunate Hyatt had deciphered to his undoing. Moss had said Hyatt’s sister had it, but the country had been searched from end to end for Hyatt’s sister. It had not been difficult to trace her. Elk, after half an hour’s search in Falmouth had discovered her abode, but the girl was not there.
“She left for London yesterday,” he was informed.
From that moment Miss Hyatt had disappeared.
A telegram had reached her on the very day of Hyatt’s death. It said “Come.”
There was no name, no address. The telegram had been handed in at St. Martin’s-le-Grand; unearthed, it was found to be in typewritten characters, and the address at its back a fictitious one.
One other item of news Elk secured; there had been a lady on the same errand as himself. “A foreign lady,” said the good folks of Falmouth. When T.B. played the spy to the banker and the Spanish dancer, he had heard her speak of a visit to Cornwall; this, then, was the visit.
He had some two days to discover Eva Hyatt — this was her name.
Silinski might have killed her; he was large in his views and generously murderous, and one life more or less would not count. T.B. paced his room, his head sunk on his breast.
Where was the girl?
The telegram said “Come.” It suggested some prearranged plan in which the girl had acquiesced; she was to leave Falmouth and go somewhere.
Who sent the telegram? Not Silinski; this Eva Hyatt, by all showing, was of the class that sticks for the proprieties.
Suppose she had come to London, where would Catherine Silinski have placed her? Near at hand; a thought struck T.B.
He had been satisfied with deporting the dancing girl, a fruitless precaution, as it turned out; he had made no search of her flat. Had she been arrested in the ordinary way, the search would have followed, but her arrest was a little irregular.
He took down his overcoat and struggled into it, made a selection of keys from his pocket, and went out. It was a forlorn hope, but forlorn hopes had often been the forerunners of victory with him, and there was nothing to be lost by trying.
He came to the great hall of the mansion in Baker Street.
The hall porter recognized him and touched his cap.
“Evening, sir.” Then, “I suppose you know the young lady hasn’t come back yet?”
T.B. did know, but said nothing. The porter was in a talkative mood.
“She sent me a wire from Liverpool, saying that she’d been called away suddenly.”
T.B. nodded. He knew this, too, for it was he who had sent the wire.
“What the other young lady couldn’t understand,” continued the porter, and T.B.’s heart gave a leap, “was, why—”
“Why she hadn’t wired her, eh?” the detective jumped in.
“Well, you see, she was so busy—”
“Of course!” The porter clucked his lips impatiently. “Of course, you saw her off, didn’t you, sir?”
“I saw her off,” said T.B. gravely.
“I’d forgotten that; why, you went away together, an’ I never told the young lady. She’s upstairs in Miss Silinski’s flat at this moment. My word, she’s been horribly worried—”
“I’ll go up and see her. As a matter of fact, I’ve come here for the purpose,” said T.B. quickly.
He took the lift to the second floor, and walked along the corridor. He reached No. 43 and his hand was raised to press the little electric bell of the suite when the door opened quickly and a girl stepped out. She gave a startled cry as she saw the detective, and drew back.
“I beg your pardon,” said T.B. with a smile. “I’m afraid I startled you.”
She was a big florid girl with a certain awkwardness of movement.
“Well-dressed but gauche,” mentally summarized the detective. “Provincial! she’ll talk.”
“I was a little startled,” she said, with a ready smile. “I thought it was the postman.”
“But surely postmen do not deliver letters in this palatial dwelling,” he laughed. “I thought the hall porter—”
“Oh, but this is a registered letter,” she said importantly, “from America.”
All the time T.B. was thinking out some method by which he might introduce the object of his visit. An idea struck him.
“Is your mother—” she looked blank, “er — aunt within?” he asked.
He saw the slow suspicion gathering on her face.
“I’m not a burglar,” he smiled, “in spite of my alarming question, but I’m in rather a quandary. I’ve a friend — well, not exactly a friend — but I have business with Miss Silinski, and—”
“Here’s the postman,” she interrupted.
A quick step sounded in the passage, and the bearer of the King’s mails, with