Science Of The Perfect Swing

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Science Of The Perfect Swing

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.
 CHAPTER XXVIII

I F Hellier could only have seen into the consciousness of our friend
Freyberger, he would have admitted that the latter, although a
professional detective, had an open mind, and was not entirely
bound up in self-conceit.
Freyberger, as in duty bound, took a cab and made as fast as a
London cab-horse could carry him, through London traffic, towards
the Yard. At the Yard the Chief was just getting into his motor-car,
when he saw Freyberger he beckoned to him.
“Come with me,” he said, “I am going on a case.”
Freyberger knew what that meant.
Some crime of extra magnitude had just taken place.
When the chief went in person like this, it meant big things.
He got into the tonneau without enthusiasm, for he had so much
on his mind that he did not relish the prospect of an additional
burden, and the car started.
It passed up Regent Street and then up Oxford Street in the
direction of the Marble Arch, and straight on towards Notting Hill
Gate. At Notting Hill Gate it turned down Silver Street, and turning
the corner into High Street, Kensington, headed for Hammersmith.
It had not gone more than a couple of hundred yards in this
direction when it slowed, and a mounted constable, who had been
slowly patrolling the street, turned his horse, and putting it to the
trot led the way, turning sharply to the right from the High Street up
St James’s Road.
 St James’s Road, not far from the grounds surrounding Holland
House, has a touch of the provincial town suburb about it; every
house has a garden in front of it, and every garden has one or more
trees. It is a good middle-class neighbourhood; a few of the houses
are let out in furnished apartments, though no bill or sign indicates
the fact, but the majority of the inhabitants are of the professional
or retired business class.
About the middle of the road, by the right-hand kerb, a crowd of
people could be made out.
The car slowed down and stopped a few yards from the crowd,
the chief and Freyberger alighted, and, led by a constable, passed
through the throng up a garden path.
The hall door, at which they knocked, was opened by a constable.
“You have the body here?” asked the chief.
“Yes, sir,” replied the man, saluting.
“Bring us to it.”
The constable opened a door on the right of the passage,
disclosing a comfortably furnished sitting-room. A man was standing
with his back to the mantelpiece. It did not require the tall hat,
standing on the table with the stethoscope beside it, to indicate his
profession. A middle-aged woman, evidently recovering from some
great agitation, was standing by the table, and on the floor lay
something covered with a sheet.
“Shut the door,” said the chief to the constable; then turning to
the man:
“You are a doctor?”
“Yes,” replied the other. “I was summoned nearly an hour ago, and
have waited at the request of the police till your arrival. Life was
extinct when I came.”
“Thank you,” said the chief. “Sit down, Freyberger. A pen, ink and
paper, please. Thanks.” Then to the constable, “Were you the officer
called?”
“I was called at ten-fifteen, being on point duty, arrived to find
deceased lying on the pavement in front of his house. He was black
in the face; and, thinking it was a case of a fit, I unbuttoned his
collar and attempted artificial respiration on the pavement, as he lay,
but without success. This lady, here, was standing by the corpse;
there was also a crowd of some ten or twelve people.
“This lady told me deceased lodged with her and that she believed
he had been murdered.
“I had him conveyed into this room, sending messengers for a
doctor, and to the High Street, Kensington, Police Station. I again
attempted artificial respiration, and was so engaged when this
gentleman arrived.”
“That all?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thanks. Now, sir,” turning to the doctor, “may I ask you just to
state the facts within your knowledge?”
“I was called at ten-thirty, about. I live in the High Street. My
name’s Mason. I found deceased here upon the floor and the
constable attempting artificial respiration. Life was extinct.”
“How long had the man been dead?”
“A very short time; possibly not more than half an hour, perhaps
less.”
“Cause of death?”
“Strangulation. The man has been, in my opinion, garrotted,
seized from behind by the throat and literally strangled. The thyroid
cartilage has been broken, and there are the marks of fingers upon
the skin of the neck.”
“No other marks or wounds?”
“I have found no other.”
 “Thanks. Constable, remove the sheet.”
The officer stripped away the sheet, revealing a terrible spectacle.
Upon the floor lay the body of a middle-aged man, judging from the
scanty hair streaked with grey; the face was of a dull purple, the
tongue and eyes were protruding.
The body was well dressed in a frock coat and grey pepper and
salt coloured trousers.
“Had he been robbed?” asked the chief of the constable.
“No sir; the watch and chain, valuable ones evidently, were intact,
also the money in his pockets.”
“Now,” said the chief, turning to the woman, “what do you know
about it?”
She told her tale in a broken voice.
Deceased had lodged with her for some years. His name was
Goldberg, a retired City man and well-to-do. Always of an evening
he went out before retiring to rest, and took a short walk up and
down the road, rarely being absent more than ten minutes.
This evening he had gone out as usual. She was in the front
bedroom upstairs, closing the window and about to pull down the
blind, when she heard a stifled cry from the street, and looking out
saw two men struggling on the pavement just before the garden
gate.
She could not tell in the least what the men were like, for the light
was very indistinct.
She ran downstairs. Her husband was out, and she had no one in
the house with her.
She put the hall door on the chain and, opening it as far as
possible with the chain on, she peeped through the opening.
She saw a dark form on the pavement beyond the garden gate. It
did not move.
 There was no sound to be heard, and, plucking up courage after
awhile, she opened the hall door and came down the garden path
towards the gate.
Mr Goldberg was lying on the pavement, “all of a heap.” She
screamed, and a woman from over the way came across the road.
The woman ran into the High Street for assistance, and a policeman
came. The woman across the way had seen nothing of the two men
or the struggle.
“Had Mr Goldberg any enemies, to your knowledge?”
“No, sir, he was the best and kindest of men.”
“Had he any relatives?”
“No, sir, only a brother in Australia.”
“Has he heard lately from his brother, do you know?”
“Yes, sir; he had a letter only yesterday.”
“Well, Freyberger,” said the chief, “have you any question to ask?”
“None, sir; but, if you will permit me, I will have that crowd
cleared away from the street outside. I would like to examine the
road.”
“How many men have you outside?” asked the chief of the
constable.
“Four, sir.”
“Go and clear the crowd away. Send for assistance, if necessary.”
“If you will permit me, sir,” said Freyberger, “I will go with the
constable.”
“Do so; I will wait here until your return.”
Freyberger left the room. He did not return for some twenty
minutes.
“Well?” asked the chief, when he returned.
 “I would like to have a moment’s conversation with you in private,
sir.”
The doctor had already gone, the chief asked the landlady to
withdraw, and Freyberger and he found themselves alone in the
room with the corpse.
“I have found nothing, sir,” said Freyberger, “I went as a matter of
routine. I have, of course, searched narrowly the pavement, the
gutter and the road for any possible trace, any dropped article that
might possibly furnish a clue. I did not expect to find anything.
“Why?”
“Because, sir, the man who has murdered Mr Goldberg is not a
man to leave clues behind him.”
“You know him, then?”
“I believe I do, sir. I believe the man who has just committed this
crime is no other than Klein, alias Kolbecker, alias Müller.”
The chief made an impatient movement.
“You must have that man on your brain,” said he. “What on earth
connexion can you make between this and the Gyde case?”
“One moment, sir; you have had a large experience. Have you
ever come across an exactly similar case to this, that is to say, the
case of a harmless, elderly gentleman strangled openly in the street
for no apparent reason?”
“No, I can recall no such case.”
“The fact of strangulation alone marks it as a crime by itself.
Murderers use every sort of weapon save their own hands.”
“The hand, as a rule, is the weapon of the madman.”
“Yes?”
“Well, sir, I will tell you, in a few words, why I connect this crime
with the case of Sir Anthony Gyde.”
 He then detailed the facts he had learned about the crimes that
had followed the murder in the Rue de Turbigo.
The chief listened attentively.
“So you think—?” he said.
“I think, sir, that the ravening beast roused in Klein’s brain by the
murder committed in Cumberland is now beginning to show itself by
its actions. I think if we do not seize Klein over this business another
murder of the same sort is sure to occur. Maybe several more. Our
main hope is to track him now. If we miss him now, we will have
several more chances, but that will mean several more victims. With
your permission, I will not return with you to the Yard to-night, I will
remain in this neighbourhood. There is a strong possibility that he
has a den somewhere round here, in the shape of a furnished room.
I wish to remain about the spot. I will take a room here for the
night, if the woman of the house will let me have one. I must get a
list of all known lodging-houses in the neighbourhood, and I must be
on the spot here early in the morning.”
“Very well,” replied the chief; “act as you think fit. I give you a
free hand in the matter.”
Freyberger accompanied him outside. He got into the motor-car
and drove off, and the detective was returning to the house when a
stranger, who had just come up, accosted him.
“I am on the General Press Association,” said the stranger; “you
are, I believe, Inspector Freyberger. Can you give me any details of
the crime just committed?”
“Certainly,” replied Freyberger, with suspicious alacrity. He gave a
short account of the murder, which the pressman entered eagerly in
his notebook.
“Any details known as to the appearance of the murderer?” asked
the representative of the General Press Association.
“The landlady says that, as far as she could see, the assailant was
a tall man with a black beard,” replied Freyberger.
 “Thanks,” replied the other, “good night.” He hurried off jubilantly
to get his copy in and Freyberger went up the garden path to the
house.
“When Klein reads that description of himself in the morning
papers,” said Freyberger, to himself, “he will smile, if that face could
ever smile. It will make him feel even more secure than if the truth
were told that the landlady could not describe the assassin at all. Of
course, the coroner’s inquest will contradict what I have said. Well,
we must get hold of the reporter at the inquest and doctor his
account. Damn the Press, for one criminal it catches it assists in the
escape of twenty.
“Now, what will Klein do first thing to-morrow morning? He will
most possibly buy a newspaper, therefore every newspaper shop in
the neighbourhood must be watched.
“I say, most possibly. I would have said, most probably, were Klein
an ordinary criminal.
“However, we must leave no stone unturned.”
 CHAPTER XXIX

W HEN 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.
 CHAPTER XXX

F REYBERGER had slept scarcely three hours during the night, yet
he looked quite fresh.
He had done a tremendous lot of work in the way of putting out
nets.
He had as complete a list as could be obtained of the lodging-
houses in the neighbourhood, every early morning coffee stall in
Kensington and Bayswater had been kept under surveillance, also
the newspaper shops. The tube stations at Notting Hill Gate, Holland
Park, Shepherd’s Bush, and Queen’s Road, Bayswater, had been
watched, and the result, up to this had been the arrest of one man
who had easily proved his identity and the fact of his innocence.
The bother was that Klein’s description as to dress could not be
given. Only the fact that he was pale, clean-shaven, of the middle
height and spoke with a German accent.
“How fortunate,” cried Hellier; “you are the very person I wished
most to see.”
“Mr Hellier, I believe,” replied the other, who did not seem at all
enthusiastic at the meeting. “What can I do for you?”
“Will you walk a few paces down the street?”
“Certainly.”
“It’s this way,” said Hellier. “I read in the papers this morning of a
crime.”
“Which?”
 “The murder of Mr Goldberg.”
“Yes, yes.”
“You remember what I said to you last night?”
“Perfectly.”
“Well, it occurred to me that this was the crime we were waiting
for.”
“I was unaware that I was waiting for any crime,” said the other.
“Well, you remember my predicting that a crime of this nature
would occur?”
“An easy prediction in London, where we have a murder every
second day.”
“Not strangulation without an apparent motive.”
“Well, well; what do you wish to say about it?”
“Well, convinced in my own mind that the author of this crime was
also the criminal in the Gyde and Lefarge cases, I determined to
come up here and look about.”
“To play the rôle of an amateur detective, in short.”
“Yes, but please don’t misunderstand me. My object is not
curiosity. I will be frank with you. I love Mademoiselle Lefarge, and I
can never hope to marry her till her father’s name is cleared.”
“You wish to marry this lady and cannot do so till her father’s
name is cleared. Is that what I understand you to say?”
“Yes.”
“Well, shall I tell you how you can best help to clear her father’s
name?”
“Yes.”
“Go home and forget about it all; leave the matter in the hands of
professional men who know how to act. Nothing interferes so much
with us as interference.”
“Perhaps, but you know chance sometimes gives a clue where
intelligence fails to find any. What would you say if I told you that I
believed I had seen Klein, the man you are looking for, this
morning?”
Freyberger started, but recovered himself instantly.
“I would say that I believed you to be mistaken.”
“Yet I have seen a man whose face closely resembled that portrait
you showed us last night.”
“Where?”
“In St Ann’s Road, close to St James’s Road. I strolled along it by
chance this morning, after visiting the scene of the murder, and,
coming out of one of the houses, I saw this man.”
“Yes?”
“I followed him to the High Street. There he got on to a motor-
omnibus and I lost him.”
“You lost him!”
“It was not my fault, for I could not stop the omnibus and there
were no cabs.”
“It does not in the least matter,” said Freyberger, in a tone of
assumed indifference, “for it was a thousand to one you were
mistaken.”
“If that is your opinion,” said Hellier, angry at the other’s tone,
“there is no use in our discussing the matter further. I wish you good
day.”
“Stay a moment,” said Freyberger.
“Yes.”
“You say you saw this man coming out of a certain house. Can
you recognize the house again?”
 “Yes.”
“Well, as a matter of form, I will accompany you there.”
Hellier hesitated a moment, then he conquered his sense of pique
and turned in the direction of Hammersmith.
They walked, scarcely exchanging a word. Freyberger’s mind was
filled with anxiety, expectancy and a sense of deep irritation.
There was something exasperating to him about Hellier. This
outsider had already cast so much light on the case; was it destined
that he should cast more?
“This is the house,” said Hellier, when they had reached the place.
“Empty,” replied Freyberger, looking over the railings.
It was the only detached residence in the road, all the other
houses were semi-detached.
The garden was neglected and the front windows blindless and
dusty.
Freyberger opened the gate and, followed by Hellier, walked up
the path to the front door. He knocked and rang, but there was no
reply.
“Let’s try the back,” said Freyberger; “some people live in the back
premises and only keep a hall door for ornament.”
But no one, apparently, lived in the back premises of No. 18 St
Ann’s Road.
A glassed-in verandah ran along the whole of the back.
Freyberger tried the verandah door, it was locked. Some green
shelves, containing a few empty flower-pots, were visible; against
one of the shelves stood a hoe, on the blade of the hoe some dark
brown traces of earth proclaimed to the eye of the detective that the
instrument had been used quite recently, and not for hoeing but for
digging.
“There is no one here,” said Freyberger.
 “No one now,” replied Hellier, “but there has been some one.”
“Oh, yes, no doubt; one might say the same of Sodom and
Gomorrah, or Pompeii.”
“If Klein has been here, if this is one of his hiding places, he may
come back.”
“If,” replied Freyberger.
They were walking back down the garden path.
At the gate Hellier made one last attempt to infect the detective
with his own idea.
“Could you not get a search warrant and search the place?”
This remark completely broke Freyberger’s temper down, and the
German came out.
“Search warrant! You talk like a child, not like a man. Warrant to
search for what? Flower-pots? What I will do in the case I will do. I
wish for no interference. I wish you good day.”
He turned to the left, towards Malpas Road. Hellier to the right.
“Fool,” thought Hellier, “pig-headed ass; no matter—wait.”
“Swine-hound,” thought Freyberger; “directing me what to do!
Search warrant!”
Freyberger turned the corner, walked a hundred yards down
Malpas Road and then came back.
Hellier was not in sight. The detective waited for a moment or two
to make sure, and then approached No. 18.
He entered the gate, closed it behind him, and made for the back
garden.
Here he stood for a moment, looking about him with eager eyes.
Then he began searching about on the ground attentively, as a
person searches who has dropped a coin.
 There was a fairish sized grass plot, on which the grass was rank
and long. A gravelled walk lay round it, and a flowerless flower bed
between the walk and the garden wall.
There was no sign of a bootmark anywhere, though the ground
was soft and there had been no frost on the previous night.
The gravel was disturbed on the walk leading to the verandah, but
that was nothing.
In that portion of the garden where digging was possible there
was no sign. Yet the hoe had been used quite recently, and a sure
instinct told him that it had not been used in the front garden, where
observation was possible, but here, in this place that was overlooked
by nothing but blind walls and the back windows of an empty house.
Suddenly his eye was struck by an object upon the flower bed by
the rear wall.
A half-withered cabbage leaf. There were withered leaves and to
spare in the garden, but this was the only cabbage leaf. Nothing
looked more natural or in keeping with the general untidiness of the
place. A thousand men hunting for traces would have disregarded it.
Freyberger walked towards it and picked it up.
The bit of ground it had covered had been disturbed.
In a moment, digging with his naked hand, he had unearthed a
flat, morocco leather-covered box. He opened it, it was a jewel case
and empty. Upon the silk lining of the cover was the name and
address:
“Smith and Wilkinson, Regent Street.”
Smith and Wilkinson, Sir Anthony Gyde’s jewellers.
He unearthed another box, and yet another.
The sweat stood out in beads upon his forehead.
There was something in the Gyde case that affected him as he
had never been affected before. Perhaps it was some effluence from
the obscure and diabolical mind with which he felt himself at war;
perhaps it was the extraordinary intricacies of the pursuit, and the
foreknowledge that the creature against whom he had pitted himself
was at once a demon, a genius and a madman. Perhaps it was on
account of all these reasons that, when he unearthed these recent
traces, his soul turned in him and a furious hunger and hatred filled
his heart.
The hound hates the thing he is pursuing. The lion hates the buck.
All hunting is an act of vengeance; not for food alone does the
pursuer chase the pursued, but from some old antipathy begotten
when the world was young.
At times Freyberger, in his unravelling of the Gyde case, was
seized by an overmastering desire to have his hands upon the
creature he was pursuing and to drag him to his death.
It is one of the laws of mind that the ferocity of the pursuer
increases at each double and shift of the pursued.
Carefully searching with his hands in the soft earth and finding
nothing else, Freyberger smoothed the soil, replaced the cabbage
leaf and carefully effaced his traces on the gravel of the walk. Then,
with the jewel cases in the pocket of his overcoat, he approached
the house.
He examined the lock of the verandah door. The affair was so
shaky that he could have burst it in with a kick, but violence was the
last thing to be used. He drew from his pocket what the thieves of
Madrid term a “matadore”; what the Apachés of Paris term a
“nightingale”; what an honest man might call a piece of thick wire
about a foot long, but of such material as to be fairly easily bent or
straightened without danger of fracture.
He bent one end of this piece of wire and introduced it into the
lock, just as a surgeon introduces a probe into a sinus. Having
explored the mechanism, he drew out the wire, rebent it, introduced
it, and with a turn of his wrist opened the door.
 Then he carefully pushed the bolt of the lock back, entered and
pulled the door to.
There was nothing in the verandah, with the exception of the
flower-pots, the hoe, and an old watering pot that had lost its rose.
The door leading into the house gave upon a passage floored with
linoleum. On the right lay a room entirely destitute of furniture, on
the left a sitting-room decently furnished, with the embers of a fire
still smouldering in the grate.
The remains of some food lay upon the table in the middle of the
room, also upon the table a copy of The Daily Telegraph of that day.
This, then, was the den of the beast, the home of the demon.
Nothing at all pointed to the fact. It was just the sitting-room of a
man in somewhat reduced circumstances, an honest man, or a
rogue, as the case might be.
There was a tobacco jar on the mantelpiece, and in it tobacco and
a bundle of cigarette papers; a pair of old slippers stood beside the
armchair on the right of the fireplace.
A pile of newspapers stood in one corner of the room, and in
another lay an old valise.
Freyberger opened the valise. There was a suit of clothes in it,
nothing else—a frock coat and waistcoat and a pair of trousers.
They were evidently the production of a first class tailor, though
the little squares of glazed linen, bearing the customer’s name,
which all good London tailors affix to their productions, both under
the collar of the coat and inside the strap of the waistcoat, had been
removed.
Freyberger returned the things to the valise and replaced it in the
corner, then he began a minute inspection of the room.
He examined the pile of newspapers. They were all recent and
dating from the day after the murder committed in the Cottage on
the Fells. Daily Telegraphs, Daily Mails, Westminster Gazettes, every
sort and condition of newspaper, and in each of them was a report,
more or less full, more or less varying, of the Gyde mystery.
He returned them to their corner and resumed his search of the
room, examining every hole and cranny, lifting the hearthrug and
fender, exploring the contents of the trumpery vases on the
chimneypiece and finding nothing of much importance, if we except
the sheath of a case knife lying behind one of the vases.
He left the room and went upstairs to the bedrooms. They were
all empty, clean swept and destitute of anything to hold the eye.
The person he was in pursuit of, if he lived in this house, evidently
slept upon the old couch in the sitting-room, and did not trouble
much about the conveniences of life.
Freyberger returned to the sitting-room, sat down in the armchair,
just as though he were at home, took a cigar from his pocket and lit
it.
He was in the tiger’s den. At any moment it was quite within the
bounds of possibility that the door might open and the terror, having
let himself in by the verandah, enter the room. This was not what
made Freyberger feel uneasy, but rather the thought that the
unknown might have noticed Hellier following him and taken fright.
Freyberger was quite unarmed; yet, had his sinister opponent
entered the room at that moment, he would have arrested him just
as he had arrested the Fashion Street murderer, and borne him,
without doubt, in the same manner, to justice.
But though absolutely destitute of fear, he was by no means
destitute of caution; and as he sat smoking and waiting, he was
revolving in his mind the question of calling in help.
That involved leaving the house, and that might involve total
failure.
At any moment the quarry might return. He decided to wait.
 The door of the room and the door leading to the verandah were
open, so that he could easily hear the approach of anyone from the
back premises and quite as easily the approach of anyone from the
hall door.
It was after half-past two now. The house was deathly still; there
was not even the ticking of a clock, the whisper of a breath of wind
from the garden outside or the movement of a mouse behind the
wainscotings to break the silence.
Occasionally the rumble of a passing vehicle came from the road,
nothing more.
It was after three when the watcher suddenly started, sat straight
up in the armchair and listened intently.
The front garden gate had been opened and shut with a clang, a
step sounded on the gravel and a loud double rap at the hall door
brought Freyberger to his feet.
He sprang from the room, came down the passage, undid the
chain and bolts of the hall door, unlatched it, flung it open and found
on the steps a telegraph boy.
“Gyde?” said the boy, holding out a telegram.
“Yes,” said Freyberger, taking it.
The boy turned and went off whistling, and the detective, having
rebolted the door, returned to the sitting-room with the telegram in
his hand.
He tore it open.
“Handed in, London Street, Paddington, 2.15. Received, High
Street, Kensington, 2.40.
“Be sure to meet me at six.”
That was all; no name, no address. Freyberger sat down in the
armchair, with the telegram in his hand; he was thunderstruck.
He reread it, then looked at the envelope.
 It was addressed:
“Gyde, 18 St Ann’s Road, Kensington.”
This thing quite upset his calculations. It was addressed simply to
“Gyde.” It is not a common name; yet, of course, there were
thousands of people of that name beside Sir Anthony. But, taking
into account the jewel cases discovered, this telegram could have
been sent to no one else but Sir Anthony.
That meant that he was alive. Freyberger was convinced that the
man seen by Hellier was Klein. If Gyde were alive, then he must
have been staying here at No. 18 St Ann’s Road. Klein had also been
staying here. Therefore Gyde and Klein were working in collusion.
That would mean that Sir Anthony Gyde had entered into a
partnership with this man, Klein—for what purpose?
For the purpose of murdering some unknown man in a cottage on
the Fells of Cumberland, and doing it in such a manner that Klein
would appear to be the victim and he, Sir Anthony Gyde, the
murderer.
By extension it would mean that Lefarge, long ago, had entered
into a similar partnership with Müller. The thing was preposterous.
What, then, was the reason of this telegram?
All at once an explanation of it flashed across Freyberger’s mind.
Could it be a “blind?” Could Klein, suspecting Hellier of following
him, suspecting a trap of the police, have sent this message?
Freyberger had constructed Klein in his own mind from all sorts of
fragments—the two photographs, his handwriting, his methods. The
man, if he was a man and not a demon, was a master of subterfuge.
The momentary insanity which had caused him to strangle Mr
Goldberg would not in the least interfere with his reason.
“Now,” said Freyberger to himself, “if he noticed Hellier following
him, his reasoning would have run like this:
 “I left a man dead in a road close by here last night; I came out
this morning and was followed by a man who was very much alive
and who had something of the cut of a detective.
“No one saw me last night. Why, then, did this man follow me?
Can it be that they suspect that I, who was supposed to be
murdered in Cumberland, am alive? Can they have circulated my
description? It will be safer for me not to go back to No. 18 St Ann’s
Road, and, to confuse Messieurs the Police, should they set a trap
there, I will send a telegram to Gyde at that address, so that they
may be reconfirmed in their idea that Gyde is still in the land of the
living and Klein in the land of the dead.
“No one saw me last night but the landlady, and her description
will scarcely help the police against me: a tall man with a black
beard.
“Oh, damnation!”
Freyberger suddenly leapt to his feet.
“What possessed me! What possessed me to use such a simple
artifice in the pursuit of this man, who, whatever else he may be, is
half a logician, half a magician?
“When he read that description in The Daily Telegraph this
morning, what said he to himself? He said ‘Why this exact
description of a man who was not there?
“‘It is either the landlady’s terror that caused her to see what was
not, or it is a device of the police. Now the police never use a device
like that, which, after all, clouds a case to a certain extent, unless
they have some important reason.
“‘Of course, it may be simply due to the terror of the landlady, yet
this false description, widely circulated, coupled with the fact that I
have been followed, is, to say the least, suspicious.’
“That would be the line of his argument. Double fool that I was to
forget that I was dealing, not with a criminal but a genius in crime.
 “This man forgets nothing, foresees everything.
“I have been a fool, and yet—” Freyberger’s face unclouded a bit.
“Is there another man in London who would have dug into his plans
so deeply as I have done, connected the Lefarge case with the Gyde
case and proved him indubitably the prime mover in both?
“A few days ago I knew nothing about this man whom Sir Anthony
Gyde is supposed to have murdered. What do I know now? What
have I discovered by the aid of my own intelligence? I know his
name, his face, his mind in part. I know that he has not been
murdered by Gyde; I am almost assured that he has murdered
Gyde.
“I know that, under the name of Müller, he was not murdered by
Lefarge; I am almost assured that he murdered Lefarge. I know that
he is a homicidal maniac, whose pet method is strangulation.
“I know that he has about him Gyde’s jewellery, of which he is
sure to try to dispose. I know that he has lived here; I know the
address where he lived in Howland Street. But my most important
knowledge is the knowledge of the statue and the bent of his mind.
“I have accumulated a mass of evidence that will damn him and
crush him whenever I catch him, a mass of evidence that will clear
two innocent men and expose to the world’s gaze the greatest and
most complete villain that the world has ever beheld. Come, it is not
so bad. I have committed a fault; I tried to match him at his own
game of subterfuge, and that telegram was my answer. Alas! I am
not so clever as he. But I have this in my favour, that I know much
about him and he knows nothing about me.
“I have seen his hand, he has not seen mine.
“The question remains, what shall I do now? Remain here or go?
Remain by all means, even if I have to remain till to-morrow
morning. If he comes back I will seize him. If he does not come
back, then I will know definitely that he has taken fright, that he
suspects, and that he is, indeed, the murderer of Goldberg.”
 CHAPTER XXXI

T HERE was some coal in the coal-box and a bundle of wood in the
grate. The weather was chilly and a fire would have been very
acceptable, but the flicker of it when dusk was drawing on might
have been observed from outside. So he determined to do without a
fire.
He would also be condemned to fast, for the remains of food upon
the table he could not touch. One does not eat where a leper has
fed, or an unclean beast.
He had his pipe with him, however, and plenty of tobacco.
Time wore on and dusk fell, gradually the room grew darker and
the silence of the house more oppressive.
Nothing could be more nerve-straining than a vigil like this in the
cold, in the darkness, in the silence; sitting with every sense alert,
waiting for the coming of a being far more terrible than a ghost.
Passing Freyberger in the street, you would not have looked at
him twice. You would never have fancied him a man of more than
ordinary strength. But, were you to have seen him stripped of his
clothes, you would have recognized the proportions of a trained
athlete.
He had the physical basis of courage, that is to say, a great chest
measurement.
He had also the mental basis of courage, that is to say, an almost
total disregard for danger.
Danger blindness.
 This same mental basis of courage is not always a desirable asset,
for it is often the basis, also, of a low intelligence. It nearly always
bespeaks want of imagination and ideality.
In Freyberger’s case, however, it was by no means the basis of a
low intelligence, and as for imagination and ideality, he had quite
sufficient for a man engaged in his profession.
The darkness deepened until it became absolute.
Time ceased as far as the watcher was concerned.
This sepulchral house seemed even deserted by mice, the
movement of one behind the wainscoting would have come as a
relief.
Now and then, for a moment, the watcher in the chair, to obtain
relief from the absolute negation of sound, pressed his hands over
his ears; it was as though he were attempting to shut out the
silence.
How long he had been waiting like this it would have been hard to
say, probably an hour, possibly less, when he heard the front gate
gently opened and as gently shut. Freyberger wore shoes; he had
loosened the laces of them, and now he kicked them off.
With incredible swiftness, considering the fact that he was moving
in black darkness, he was out of the room and in the passage.
At the end of the passage a pale, dim oblong of light indicated the
position of the door leading on to the verandah. Freyberger came
down the passage towards the door, and then, himself plunged in
utter darkness, he stood, like fate, waiting. He could see the squares
of glass forming the verandah wall and, dimly, the garden beyond.
Presently, moving with sinister gentleness and silence, the vague
silhouette of a man came gliding along the verandah side till it
reached the outside door.
The man was, as far as Freyberger could see, muffled up in a
great coat; he wore a slouch hat and he was about the middle
height.
When he reached the door, he paused and drew from his pocket
something, the form of which the detective could not distinguish.
Freyberger had left the door, it will be remembered, simply closed.
He could easily have locked it from the inside by the same method
as he had opened it, but he had determined to leave it as it was.
The man turned the handle of the door, found that it opened
easily, made a slight exclamation of surprise and slipped into the
verandah with the rapidity of a lizard.
He closed the door behind him.
Freyberger, standing in the passage as motionless as a corpse,
scarcely breathed. The man stood for a moment, glancing around
him, then, leaving the verandah, he came down the passage.
The next moment Freyberger was upon him.
A man attacked in this fashion does not cry out; if he emits any
sound it is the gasp of a person who has received a douche of cold
water.
The attack of Freyberger was ferocious, overpowering,
unexpected, yet it was received as if by a rock. After the first shock,
which nearly bore him to the ground, the intruder stiffened; to the
grip of iron he responded by a grip of steel, and then, in the dark,
between the narrow walls of the passage, a terrible struggle began.
A listener in the verandah would have heard very little. Just the
hard breathing of the two antagonists and the sound of their bodies
hurled from side to side against the passage walls. The detective
was a heavier man than his antagonist, but they were equally
matched in science.
Now and then Freyberger succeeded in lifting him from his feet
and, with desperate efforts, attempted to bear him backwards and
throw him; but the feet always came to ground again, and the body
turned from the helpless bundle that a man is who has lost
possession of his feet, into an inflexible statue of steel.
Freyberger, failing in this, relaxed, or seemed to relax, his efforts
for a moment; the other automatically responded, a second later.
With a crash they were on the floor, the detective with his knees on
the arms of his fallen antagonist. He had cross-buttocked him.
There is no position on earth where a man is more utterly helpless
than when lying upon the ground, with another man kneeling upon
his arms. He may kick and struggle as much as he pleases, the only
result is to wear out his strength.
The fallen one recognized this fact, apparently, for he lay still.
Freyberger, breathing hard from his exertions, took a matchbox
from his waistcoat pocket, lit a match and cast its light upon the face
of the man beneath him.
The man was Hellier.