"Z."
I passed them over to Boyd, asking his opinion, and as he sat at thewriting flap reading them we were both suddenly startled by hearing aplaintive cry near us. It was a poor lean cat, who had accidentallybeen shut up there and was undoubtedly starving.
"These letters are very strange," Boyd observed, looking up at me. "Iwonder to what the silence refers?"
"I don't know," I said. "There's evidently some very good reason thatthey've been concealed here."
As I was speaking I took from beneath some letters, still remaining inthe secret drawer Boyd had opened, a wooden pill-box, from which Iremoved the lid, there being disclosed a small quantity of a peculiargreyish-blue powder.
"Hulloa!" Boyd exclaimed, with a quick glance at it. "What's that, Iwonder? No label on the box. It looks suspicious!"
"Yes," I agreed. "I wonder what it is, that it should be so carefullyconcealed?"
"Leave it aside for a moment," he said.
Then taking up a large envelope which, while I had been reading theletters, he had been carefully examining, he drew from it twophotographs.
"Do you recognise the originals of these?" he inquired with a gravesmile.
"Great Heavens!" I gasped. "Why, they are the man and the woman whomwe found at Phillimore Place!"
"Exactly," he said, in a voice of satisfaction, just as his assistantre-entered.
Then, before I could recover from my bewilderment, he took up the littlewooden box, exclaiming--
"This powder here is a very suspicious circumstance, but we'll test itat once."
Turning to the local officer he said--
"I saw you eating something when you met us and you put part of it inyour pocket. What was it?"
"A sandwich. My wife always makes me one when I go out on night-duty,"the man explained.
"Have you any of it left?"
For answer he drew from his pocket a portion of an uneaten sandwich andplaced it upon the table. Boyd, with his pocket-knife, cut off a pieceof the meat, upon it sprinkled a grain or so of the mysterious powder,and threw it down to the hungry cat, which was mewing loudly, andpurring round our legs.
The thin creature, ravenously hungry, devoured it, but ere ten secondshad passed, and while we all three were watching attentively, itstaggered, with a faint cry, and almost without a struggle rolled over,dead.
"As I suspected," Boyd observed, turning to me. "This is the powderfrom the herbalist's."
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.
UNDER THE LEADEN SEAL.
"So far," continued Boyd, thoughtfully, pushing his hat to the back ofhis head, "we've proved one thing--that this stuff is poison."
"Yes," I said. "But these photographs? Is it not extraordinary that wefind them here among Eva's possessions?"
"It's all extraordinary," he answered. "The letters more strange thananything," and he unlocked the third drawer expectantly, only, however,to find it contained something small wrapped in a piece of dirtywash-leather. He placed it before him, carefully opening it anddisclosing something which caused us both to give vent to exclamationsof surprise.
Inside was a most commonplace object, yet to us it had a meaningpeculiarly tragic--a single penny.
Both of us recollected vividly the finding of a similar coin carefullywrapped in paper upon the body of the man at Phillimore Place, and theremust, we decided, be some mysterious connexion between our twodiscoveries.
"These letters," observed Boyd, putting aside the coin and its wrappingand taking up the correspondence he had been examining when I had foundthe box of mysterious powder, "they are all addressed to Miss Glaslyn,and in one only, as far as I can see, is her mother mentioned. Theyevidently refer to some deep secret."
"Do you think the silence can refer to the affair at Kensington?" Isuggested, holding one of the letters in my hand.
"It's impossible to tell," he answered. "We have now the clearest proofthat these letters were preserved in secret by Eva Glaslyn, togetherwith some unknown but fatal drug, and the photographs of the victim.Therefore, if circumstantial evidence may be trusted, I should beinclined to believe that these letters refer to the matter which we areinvestigating. Perhaps, indeed, the peril mentioned in one of theletters refers to your own endeavours to fathom the mystery."
"The whole thing is utterly bewildering," I said, re-reading the letterin my hand, a communication which certainly was of a most veiledcharacter, evidently being type-written to disguise the writer'sidentity.
"There is no object whatever to be gained by adopting your suggestion,"it ran. "The only absolutely safe course is to continue as in the past.The silence is effectual, and for the present is enough. All yourfears are quite groundless. Show a bold front and be cautious always.If you wish to write, send your letter to the old address."
Each of the others were similarly unintelligible, except perhaps thelater one, in which the writer said: "You are right. I, too, havediscovered cause for apprehension. A peril threatens, but if the secretis preserved it cannot harm us."
With the mass of papers and correspondence spread before us we all threeexamined these suspicious letters very carefully. In the drawer whichBoyd had opened was, among other things, a few girlish trinkets andsouvenirs of the past, and a note signed "Mary Blain," and dated fromRiverdene a couple of months before.
In the face of recent events it was a somewhat noteworthy missive, forbeginning "Dearest Eva," it gave her an invitation for tennis on thefollowing day, Tuesday. "I have also your admirer," she went on, "andhe will no doubt come. Perhaps I shall be compelled to go to townto-morrow afternoon on business, the urgent nature of which you mayguess. If I do I will convey your message to the quarter for which itis intended. Be careful how you act, and what you say to F," (meaning,I suppose, myself), "for I have no great faith in him. His friend is,of course, entirely well-disposed towards us."
I passed it to Boyd, and when he had read it, asked--
"What's your opinion of that? Is the person mentioned myself? and isthe friend actually Dick?"
"It really seems so," he responded, with knit brows. "In that case theymust have long ago suspected you of being aware of their secret. Thiswould, of course, account for the cowardly attempt to take your life."
"By means of this unknown drug here--eh?" I suggested bitterly,pointing to the small box which I had a moment before closed.
"Certainly," said the detective. "There can now be no further doubt ofMiss Glaslyn's complicity in the affair."
"I wonder who is the author of these type-written letters?" I said."If we knew that, it would let a flood of light into the whole matter."
"We shall, I hope, discover that in due course," he answered. "Let'sfinish these investigations before discussing our next move," and hecontinued, carefully placing back the letters in the secret drawers, nowand then pausing to re-read one which chanced to attract his attention.
"Look at this," he said, passing one over to me after he had glanced atit.
It was written on pale green paper in a fine fashionable woman's hand, afew brief lines, which ran:--
"My dear Eva,--I could not come to-day, but shall be there this evening.Everything is complete. When the truth becomes known the discoverywill, I anticipate, startle the world. It must, for reasons you know,remain a strict secret. Do not breathe a word to a soul.--Yours ever.
"Anna."
"That may refer to the invention we found in the laboratory; ascientific discovery which no one has come forward to claim. But who, Iwonder, is Anna?"
"She might be the dead woman," Boyd suggested.
"True," I agreed. "So she might."
During fully half an hour we still remained in that small cosy boudoir,which seemed to be Eva's own room, examining everything carefully andtaking the utmost precaution to replace everything exactly as we foundit. In this Boyd displayed real genius. Whatever was moved herearranged it with an exactness little short of astounding. Hisastuteness was remarkable. Nothing escaped him, now that h
e was on thetrail.
Yet, as I wandered about, examining things here and there, I could notrepress a feeling of reproach, for had I not, after all, assisted inthis secret search which had resulted so disastrously for the strange,mysterious woman I so dearly loved? She was now under the suspicion ofthe police. They would keep her under surveillance, for the evidence wehad already obtained was sufficient to induce any magistrate to grant awarrant for her arrest. A sudden sense of a vast, immeasurable lossfell upon me.
The small box containing the greyish-blue powder had been replaced inthe concealed drawer, and everything