The Yellow Crayon Part 54

"Quite well! You are employed by them often, I believe, but you are not on the staff, not since the affair of Nerman and the code book."

If Pa.s.smore had been capable of reverence, his eyes looked it at that moment.

"You knew this last night, sir?"

"Certainly!"

"Five years ago, sir," he said, "I told my chief that in you the detective police of the world had lost one who must have been their king. More and more you convince me of it. I cannot believe that you are ignorant of the salient points concerning Duson's death."

"Treat me as being so, at any rate," Mr. Sabin said.

"I am pardoned," Pa.s.smore said, "for speaking plainly of family matters--my concern in which is of course purely professional?"

Mr. Sabin looked up for a moment, but he signified his a.s.sent.

"You left America," Pa.s.smore said, "in search of your wife, formerly Countess of Radantz, who had left you unexpectedly."

"It is true!" Mr. Sabin answered.

"Madame la d.u.c.h.esse on reaching London became the guest of the d.u.c.h.ess of Dorset, where she has been staying since. Whilst there she has received many visits from Mr. Reginald Brott."

Mr. Sabin's face was as the face of a sphinx. He made no sign.

"You do not waste your time, sir, over the Society papers. Yet you have probably heard that Madame la d.u.c.h.esse and Mr. Reginald Brott have been written about and spoken about as intimate friends. They have been seen together everywhere. Gossip has been busy with their names. Mr. Brott has followed the Countess into circles which before her coming he zealously eschewed. The Countess is everywhere regarded as a widow, and a marriage has been confidently spoken of."

Mr. Sabin bowed his head slightly. But of expression there was in his face no sign.

"These things," Pa.s.smore continued, "are common knowledge. I have spoken up to now of nothing which is not known to the world. I proceed differently."

"Good!" Mr. Sabin said.

"There is," Pa.s.smore continued, "in the foreign district of London a man named Emil Sachs, who keeps a curious sort of a wine-shop, and supplements his earnings by disposing at a high figure of certain rare and deadly poisons. A few days ago the Countess visited him and secured a small packet of the most deadly drug the man possesses."

Mr. Sabin sat quite still. He was unmoved.

"The Countess," Pa.s.smore continued, "shortly afterwards visited these rooms. An hour after her departure Duson was dead. He died from drinking out of your liqueur gla.s.s, into which a few specks of that powder, invisible almost to the naked eye, had been dropped. At Dorset House Reginald Brott was waiting for her. He left shortly afterwards in a state of agitation."

"And from these things," Mr. Sabin said, "you draw, I presume, the natural inference that Madame la d.u.c.h.esse, desiring to marry her old admirer, Reginald Brott, first left me in America, and then, since I followed her here, attempted to poison me."

"There is," Pa.s.smore said, "a good deal of evidence to that effect."

"Here," Mr. Sabin said, handing him Duson's letter, "is some evidence to the contrary."

Pa.s.smore read the letter carefully.

"You believe this," he asked, "to be genuine?"

Mr. Sabin smiled.

"I am sure of it!" he answered.

"You recognise the handwriting?"

"Certainly!"

"And this came into your possession--how?"

"I found it on the table by Duson's side."

"You intend to produce it at the inquest?"

"I think not," Mr. Sabin answered.

There was a short silence. Pa.s.smore was revolving a certain matter in his mind--thinking hard. Mr. Sabin was apparently trying to make rings of the blue smoke from his cigarette.

"Has it occurred to you," Pa.s.smore asked, "to wonder for what reason your wife visited these rooms on the morning of Duson's death?"

Mr. Sabin shook his head.

"I cannot say that it has."

"She knew that you were not here," Pa.s.smore continued. "She left no message. She came closely veiled and departed unrecognised." Mr. Sabin nodded.

"There were reasons," he said, "for that. But when you say that she left no message you are mistaken."

Pa.s.smore nodded.

"Go on," he said.

Mr. Sabin nodded towards a great vase of La France roses upon a side table.

"I found these here on my return," he said, "and attached to them the card which I believe is still there. Go and look at it."

Pa.s.smore rose and bent over the fragrant blossoms. The card still remained, and on the back of it, in a delicate feminine handwriting:

"For my husband, "with love from "Lucille."

Mr. Pa.s.smore shrugged his shoulders. He had not the vice of obstinacy, and he knew when to abandon a theory.

"I am corrected," he said. "In any case, a mystery remains as well worth solving. Who are these people at whose instigation Duson was to have murdered you--these people whom Duson feared so much that suicide was his only alternative to obeying their behests?"

Mr. Sabin smiled faintly.

"Ah, my dear Pa.s.smore," he said, "you must not ask me that question.

I can only answer you in this way. If you wish to make the biggest sensation which has ever been created in the criminal world, to render yourself immortal, and your fame imperishable--find out! I may not help you, I doubt whether you will find any to help you. But if you want excitement, the excitement of a dangerous chase after a tremendous quarry, take your life in your hands, go in and win."

Pa.s.smore's withered little face lit up with a gleam of rare excitement.