The Clue of the Twisted Candle by Edgar Wallace (cheapest way to read ebooks .TXT) 📗

looking ill for months past,” said T. X., without any visible expression of sympathy.

“Did she take Belinda Mary?”

Mansus was puzzled. “Belinda Mary?” he repeated slowly. “Oh, you mean the daughter. No, she's at a school somewhere in France.”

T. X. whistled a snatch of a popular song, closed the little red book with a snap and replaced it in his desk.

“I wonder where on earth people dig up names like Belinda Mary?” he mused. “Belinda Mary must be rather a weird little animal—the Lord forgive me for speaking so about my betters! If heredity counts for anything she ought to be something between a head waiter and a pack of cards. Have you lost anything'?”

Mansus was searching his pockets.

“I made a few notes, some questions I wanted to ask you about and Lady Bartholomew was the subject of one of them. I have had her under observation for six months; do you want it kept up?”

T. X. thought awhile, then shook his head.

“I am only interested in Lady Bartholomew in so far as Kara is interested in her. There is a criminal for you, my friend!” he added, admiringly.

Mansus busily engaged in going through the bundles of letters, slips of paper and little notebooks he had taken from his pocket, sniffed audibly.

“Have you a cold?” asked T. X. politely.

“No, sir,” was the reply, “only I haven't much opinion of Kara as a criminal. Besides, what has he got to be a criminal about? He has all that he requires in the money department, he's one of the most popular people in London, and certainly one of the best-looking men I've ever seen in my life. He needs nothing.”

T. X. regarded him scornfully.

“You're a poor blind brute,” he said, shaking his head; don't you know that great criminals are never influenced by material desires, or by the prospect of concrete gains? The man, who robs his employer's till in order to give the girl of his heart the 25-pearl and ruby brooch her soul desires, gains nothing but the glow of satisfaction which comes to the man who is thought well of. The majority of crimes in the world are committed by people for the same reason—they want to be thought well of. Here is Doctor X. who murdered his wife because she was a drunkard and a slut, and he dared not leave her for fear the neighbours would have doubts as to his respectability. Here is another gentleman who murders his wives in their baths in order that he should keep up some sort of position and earn the respect of his friends and his associates. Nothing roused him more quickly to a frenzy of passion than the suggestion that he was not respectable. Here is the great financier, who has embezzled a million and a quarter, not because he needed money, but because people looked up to him. Therefore, he must build great mansions, submarine pleasure courts and must lay out huge estates—because he wished that he should be thought well of.

Mansus sniffed again.

“What about the man who half murders his wife, does he do that to be well thought of?” he asked, with a tinge of sarcasm.

T. X. looked at him pityingly.

“The low-brow who beats his wife, my poor Mansus,” he said, “does so because she doesn't think well of him. That is our ruling passion, our national characteristic, the primary cause of most crimes, big or little. That is why Kara is a bad criminal and will, as I say, end his life very violently.”

He took down his glossy silk hat from the peg and slipped into his overcoat.

“I am going down to see my friend Kara,” he said. “I have a feeling that I should like to talk with him. He might tell me something.”

His acquaintance with Kara's menage had been mere hearsay. He had interviewed the Greek once after his return, but since all his efforts to secure information concerning the whereabouts of John Lexman and his wife—the main reason for his visit—had been in vain, he had not repeated his visit.

The house in Cadogan Square was a large one, occupying a corner site. It was peculiarly English in appearance with its window boxes, its discreet curtains, its polished brass and enamelled doorway. It had been the town house of Lord Henry Gratham, that eccentric connoisseur of wine and follower of witless pleasure. It had been built by him “round a bottle of port,” as his friends said, meaning thereby that his first consideration had been the cellarage of the house, and that when those cellars had been built and provision made for the safe storage of his priceless wines, the house had been built without the architect's being greatly troubled by his lordship. The double cellars of Gratham House had, in their time, been one of the sights of London. When Henry Gratham lay under eight feet of Congo earth (he was killed by an elephant whilst on a hunting trip) his executors had been singularly fortunate in finding an immediate purchaser. Rumour had it that Kara, who was no lover of wine, had bricked up the cellars, and their very existence passed into domestic legendary.

The door was opened by a well-dressed and deferential man-servant and T. X. was ushered into the hall. A fire burnt cheerily in a bronze grate and T. X. had a glimpse of a big oil painting of Kara above the marble mantle-piece.

“Mr. Kara is very busy, sir,” said the man.

“Just take in my card,” said T. X. “I think he may care to see me.”

The man bowed, produced from some mysterious corner a silver salver and glided upstairs in that manner which well-trained servants have, a manner which seems to call for no bodily effort. In a minute he returned.

“Will you come this way, sir,” he said, and led the way up a broad flight of stairs.

At the head of the stairs was a corridor which ran to the left and to the right. From this there gave four rooms. One at the extreme end of the passage on the right, one on the left, and two at fairly regular intervals in the centre.

When the man's hand was on one of the doors, T. X. asked quietly, “I think I have seen you before somewhere, my friend.”

The man smiled.

“It is very possible, sir. I was a waiter at the Constitutional for some time.”

T. X. nodded.

“That is where it must have been,” he said.

The man opened the door and announced the visitor.

T. X. found himself in a large room, very handsomely furnished, but just lacking that sense of cosiness and comfort which is the feature of the Englishman's home.

Kara rose from behind a big writing table, and came with a smile and a quick step to greet the visitor.

“This is