The Dark Eyes of London Read Online

It is possible, by the way, that he may have done this in the presence of his murderers without their being aware of the fact, and I should think that is most likely."

    "I thought that," she agreed.

    "He was murdered, and writes his will on the stiff breast of his shirt, leaving the whole of his property to his daughter. Now, a sane man—and there is no reason to suppose that he was anything but sane—does not invent a daughter on the spur of the moment; so it is obvious that the Chief of the Calgary Police is wrong."

    "It is equally certain that if he was married it was not in Calgary or even in Canada, where the fact would be known," said the girl. "Secret marriages are possible in a great city, but in small places, amongst very prominent people—and apparently he lived not in a town but on a ranch—the fact that he was married could not escape knowledge."

    On the way home the previous evening Larry had told the girl almost all that the Commissioner had told him. It was not usual for him to make confidantes so quickly, but there was something very appealing about Diana Ward, and his confidence, usually a matter of slow growth, had come to maturity in a flash.

    The girl was looking thoughtfully down at her desk. "If he was married secretly," she said slowly, "would it not be—in—"

    "In London, of course," said Larry, nodding. "Send a cable to the Chief of the Calgary Police, asking him particulars about Stuart's known movements, when he was in London last before his present visit."

    She nodded, took out a telegram form from her rack, and began writing. Larry glanced through the reports mechanically, initialled one, and put the others aside.

    Then he opened the cupboard and, taking out the tray, carried it to the table. He examined the watch again in the light of day, the swivel ring, the cigar-case, and lastly the roll of paper. By daylight the embossed characters were visible, and he put his finger-tips over them very gingerly. He was not, however, accustomed to reading Braille, and he realized that his hand was a heavy one compared with the delicate touch of his secretary. She had finished her writing, and rung a bell and handed the telegram to him to read.

    "That's all right," said Larry, and, when the uniformed messenger had come and taken the telegram away: "Do you notice anything peculiar about this piece of paper?" he asked, pointing to the Braille message.

    "Yes," she said. "I was looking at it before you came. You don't mind?" she asked quickly, and Larry laughed.

    "You can examine anything except my conscience," he said. "Did you notice"—he turned his attention to the paper again—"that one end of this paper is less discoloured than the other?"

    "I noticed that one end was drier than the other last night," she said, "and that of course is the reason. It was on the dry end that we got our best results. For instance, the word 'murderer' was almost untouched by the water; it was damp but not moist."

    He nodded, and she opened a drawer of her desk and took out a sheet of brown paper.

    "I brought this with me," she said. "It is a sheet from a Braille book, and I was trying experiments with strips I had torn from the book, soaking them in my washbasin. Here is the result." She took out a little roll of shapeless pulp, which skinned when she attempted to unwind it.

    "Humph!" said Larry. They had both reached the same conclusion, but by different processes—she by actual experiment, he by deduction; and the conclusion they had come to was that the roll of paper had been placed in Gordon Stuart's pocket after the body had left the water.

    "There would be enough moisture in the clothes to saturate it through," said Larry. "This paper is very absorbent, almost as much as blotting paper. So we have come to this—that Gordon Stuart was drowned, and after he was drowned his body was handled by some person or persons, one of whom slipped this message into his pocket, and that person was either a blind man or one who believed—" He stared at her. "By Jove!" he said, as a thought struck him.

    "What were you going to say?" she asked.

    "Is it possible—" He frowned. It was an absurd idea. The man or woman who left this message on the body expected that Diana Ward would read it.

    She held no official position, and the fact that she was Larry Holt's secretary was a purely fortuitous circumstance, which could not have been anticipated by any outside person. Yet a hasty telephone call to the Chief of Internal Intelligence revealed the fact that there was no Braille expert at Scotland Yard, the only man who knew the system being at that time on sick leave for six months.

    "I think you can dismiss the idea that the message was intended for me," said the girl with a smile. "No, it was written by a blind man, or it would have been written better. A person with the use of his eyes, or—"

    "Suppose he were writing in the dark?" asked Larry. He put the tray away and locked the cupboard.

    The girl shook her head.

    "If he were not blind, he would not be in possession of the instrument to make these markings," she said, and Larry felt that was true.

    He spent two hours dictating letters to various authorities, and at eleven o'clock he rose and put on his coat and hat.

    "We're going for a joy ride," he said.

    "We?" she repeated in surprise.

    "I want you to come along," said Larry, and this time his tone was authoritative, and the girl meekly obeyed.

    There was a car waiting for them at the entrance to the Yard, and the driver evidently had already received his instructions.

    "We're going to Beverley Manor, the village which Stuart was so fond of visiting," he said. "I particularly want to discover what attractions the old Saxon church had for this unhappy man. He doesn't seem to have been an archaeologist, so the fact that the foundations were a thousand years old would not interest him."

    It was a glorious spring day, with just a sufficient nip in the air to bring the colour to young and healthy cheeks.