CHAPTER XXIX

WHEN Hellier opened his paper next morning, he read the following head-lines:
Terrible Murder in Kensington!
City man assassinated upon his own doorstep!
Clue to the murderer!

He read the report hurriedly through, then he read it slowly, dwelling on all the details.

After his prediction to Freyberger the night before, this thing came horribly pat; it had been happening, perhaps, just as he was talking to the detective.

He felt the triumph of the man who has prophesied and whose prophecy has come true.

The only thing that troubled him was the description of the murderer: “Tall man, with black beard.”

Klein was clean-shaven and of middle height; but the disguise of a beard was the commonest disguise of all; and as for the height, the assassin was seen in semi-darkness, which enlarges, and the observer was a frightened woman.

Hellier well knew the magnifying effect of terror.

Yes, without doubt, this was the expected crime. Just as an astronomer predicts the appearance of a comet, he had predicted the commission of this crime.

The fact of strangulation clinched the matter.

He breakfasted hurriedly, debating in his own mind as to what course he would pursue.

There is nothing which blinds the intellect more than a pre-conceived idea. Hellier’s opinion of the professional detective was as favourable as most people’s, but he held the idea, rightly or wrongly, that the professional detective was a person of machine-made methods. Freyberger was a professional detective.

Little knowing that Freyberger was at the moment hot on the trail of the murderer of Mr Goldberg, the idea came to him of calling at the Yard and attempt to interview Freyberger.

He dismissed the idea almost as soon as it was conceived, for, whatever he knew of detectives, he had sufficient knowledge of men to understand that the little German would brook no interference, and take advice more as a personal insult than as a compliment.

He determined to act on his own initiative, to find out what he could for himself; but first he had to call upon Mademoiselle Lefarge.

He arrived at the Langham about ten o’clock.

His interview with her did not last more than twenty minutes. He said nothing of the murder of Mr Goldberg; the thing was such a horrible basis to build hope upon that he shrank from mentioning it.

Besides, he had other things to talk of.

Cécile Lefarge, in Boulogne, even at their first meeting, had been attracted by Hellier. When he left Boulogne, she had told herself that she cared very much for him, telling herself at the same time that it was useless, that love for her was not. She told herself this with a certain philosophic calmness.

Meanwhile, her love for him was growing. The philosophic calmness vanished and gave place to pain, a dull, aching pain, almost physical.

A pain that only Hellier could relieve. He, in London, was suffering from an exactly similar pain, that only she could relieve, which condition, affecting two people at the same time, constitutes the disease—love.

He left the Langham about half-past ten, and, taking a cab, drove in the direction of Kensington.

He wished to see the place of the tragedy; he had no earthly idea of what he should do when he got there, he had only the fixed determination to do something. Often, when we have no idea of what we are going to do, a whole host of ideas on the subject in question are forming themselves in the sub-conscious part of our brains.

He dismissed the cab in the High Street and took his way on foot to St James’s Road.

A small crowd, constantly drifting away and as constantly renewed, stood before the house.

Hellier mixed with it and listened to its comments. Then, walking up St James’s Road, he examined the houses with a critical eye.

Klein was an artist. Great as his talents might be, he was unknown, a Bohemian; and these upper middle-class houses, these little gardens so carefully tended, the road itself and the atmosphere of the place were the very antithesis of everything Bohemian.

He turned from St James’s Road into Lorenzo Road, which, did places breed and multiply, might have been St James’s Road’s twin brother.

Pursuing Lorenzo Road, he arrived at St Ann’s Road.

St Ann’s Road has slightly gone to decay.

We find, sometimes, in the most prosperous districts, roads or streets that do not prosper; for some mysterious reason they go down in the world, premature age touches them, lichen and shabby-genteel people invade them, milk cans hang like tin fruit on the iron railings, and barrel organs infest them as buzz-flies infest carrion.

The houses in St Ann’s Road were semi-detached, with considerable gardens back and front; drunken-looking notice boards leaned here and there over the railings, setting forth the fact that here and there a house was to let.

Hellier was coming along the road, seeking an exit to the High Street, and determining in his own mind to make inquiries of all the house agents in the neighbourhood as to the studios to be let and the streets where such studios might be found.

He was feeling acutely the almost utter hopelessness of this wild-goose chase, when, coming out of one of the shabby-genteel gardens just in front of him, he saw a man.

The man looked up and down the road. He must have seen Hellier, but he showed no sign of having done so. Then he walked rapidly away in the direction in which Hellier was going.

Hellier walked rapidly too, although he found some difficulty in doing so, for, at the sight of the man’s face, which he beheld for only a few seconds, his heart paused in its beating and then became furiously agitated.

St Ann’s Road just here is cut by Malpas Road, leading down to the High Street.

The stranger turned the corner into Malpas Road and was lost to sight.

Hellier ran.

Just as he doubled the corner he saw the stranger turn his head and then walk on rapidly.

If the stranger had noticed Hellier at first and the distance he was off, he must have noticed now that the distance was strangely decreased, in other words that Hellier had run after him and was in pursuit.

When the stranger reached the High Street a motor-omnibus was just passing. He jumped on board, and the omnibus pursued its way.

Hellier hailed the omnibus, but the conductor was not looking and it pursued its course. There was not a cab to be seen. If there had been, of what use could he have made of it? He had no warrant of arrest in his pocket. He had done mischief, if anything, for the stranger most probably had recognized the fact of the pursuit.

This last was a bitter thought, for, in Hellier’s mind, lay the firm conviction that the stranger was Klein.

He had seen the photograph of Klein. It was a face that once seen could not easily be forgotten. The likeness, at all events, was strong enough to have acted on.

It is true, he had no warrant of arrest in his pocket; well, what of that?

He told himself now that he should have acted instantaneously regardless of all consequences, pursued the stranger at full speed, called upon him to stop, raised the hue and cry, accused him of theft, even, done anything to get him safely into a police cell, whilst the Yard was being rung up and the central authorities communicated with.

Of course, if the man had turned out to be not Klein, but some one else, he, Hellier, would have found himself in a very serious position.

What of that? The future of the woman he loved was involved. She would have forgiven him, and what did he care for all the rest of the world, for the sneers of the papers, the chaffing of his brother barristers, the fines or imprisonment that might have followed?

He had lost a chance.

The capacity to sum up a great situation, weigh everything and act instantaneously, is a gift possessed by not one man in a million, and the man that possesses it is generally a millionaire, a proved leader of armies, a captain of men.

These thoughts were passing through Hellier’s mind as he walked slowly back along the High Street, casting about him for some means by which he might repair his blunder.

He, at least, knew the house from which the stranger had come, and he felt that the best possible course to pursue was to find Freyberger and inform him of the occurrence.

But where was the detective to be found?

He might call at New Scotland Yard and try to interview him there, but that meant a loss of time. He knew that all the London police stations were telephonically connected with the Yard, and he determined to go to the nearest and state his case to the inspector on duty, asking him to communicate with the central authorities.

The nearest station was that of High Street, Kensington, and he was just turning down the archway that leads to it when he almost cannoned against the man for whom he was seeking.