could ever have been popular in any society. A New Yorker who had made himself a millionaire in the boot trade, he was ungracious both in manner and speech. He had entered the saloon unperceived, and now his tall, usually shambling figure was unwontedly erect. His left hand—big and gnarled it was—fell with an ape-like clutch on Silvervale’s shoulder.
‘You scandal-mongering little ape,’ he snarled, with a vicious tightening of the lips under his grey moustache. ‘By God, you’ll admit you’re a liar, or I’ll shake the life out of you.’
The chair fell with a crash as he pulled the journalist forward. Men sprang to intervene between the two. Cursing and struggling, de Reszke was forced back, but it took four men to do it. Suddenly his resistance relaxed.
‘That’s all right,’ he said quietly. ‘We’ll let it go for now.’ A fresh access of passion shook him, and he shot out a malignant oath. ‘I’ll make you a sorry man yet for this, Mr Silvervale.’
The journalist had picked up the fallen chair. His face was flushed, but he answered coolly. ‘I apologise,’ he said quietly. ‘I had no business to talk of your wife.’
‘Then in front of these gentlemen you’ll admit you’re a liar.’
‘I guess not. I am sorry I said anything, but what I did say was the truth. Mrs de Reszke was Madeline Fulford, and she it was who gave evidence against Crake.’
The little group between the men stiffened in expectation of a new outburst. But none came. The stoop had come back to de Reszke’s shoulders, and he lifted one hand wearily to tug at his moustache. Then without another word he turned and shambled from the room.
There was a momentary silence, broken at last by the scratch of a match as someone lit a cigarette. The embarrassment was broken, and three or four men spoke at once.
‘Look out, Silvervale,’ said Bowen, a young New York banker. ‘Lucky for you we touch Southampton tomorrow. The old man is a-gunning for you, sure. His face meant murder.’
‘Thanks. I’ll look after my own corpse,’ drawled the journalist. He spoke with an ease he did not entirely feel. ‘I suppose the game’s broken up now. I’ve had enough excitement for one night. I’m going to turn in.’
The short remainder of the voyage, in spite of de Reszke’s threat and the prophecy of Bowen, passed without incident. It was not till he was back in London that the episode was recalled to Silvervale’s mind. The boat train had reached Waterloo in the early afternoon, and at six o’clock, Silvervale, for all that his two months’ vacation had yet three days to run, had been drawn into the stir and stress of Fleet Street.
The harrassed news editor of the Morning Wire was working at speed through a basket of accumulated copy. He paused long enough to shake hands and exchange a remark or two, and then resumed his labours with redoubled ardour, for he was eager to hand over the reins to his night assistant.
He snatched irritably at a piece of tape that was handed to him by a boy, and then, adjusting his pince-nez, glanced at Silvervale.
‘Here’s a funny thing, Silver. Didn’t you come back on the Columbia? Read that.’
Silvervale took the thin strip and slowly read it through:
‘5.40: Mrs Eleanor de Reszke, the wife of an American millionaire, was this afternoon found shot dead in her sitting-room at the Palatial Hotel. She had been at the hotel only an hour or two, having arrived by the Columbia from New York this morning.’
Hardened journalist though he was, with a close acquaintance with many of the bizarre aspects of tragedy, Silvervale could not repress a little shudder. Here was a grim sequel for which he was in a degree responsible. He traced the sequence of events clearly in his imagination from the moment when de Reszke first heard that his wife had been the associate and betrayer of a swindler, to the ultimate gust of passion that must have led to the tragedy when it was borne upon him that the statement was the truth.
‘Yes. It’s—it’s queer, Danvers,’ he said unsteadily, ‘deuced queer.’ Then with a realisation that the news editor was regarding him with curiosity: ‘I’m sorry, old man; you mustn’t ask me to handle the story. You’d better put Blackwood on it. It should be a good yarn, but I’m rather mixed up in it. I may be called as a witness.’
Few things are calculated to startle the news editor of a great morning newspaper, but this time Silvervale had certainly succeeded. To tell the truth, the young man was astonished at his own scruples. He made haste to escape before he could be questioned.
Out in Fleet Street he hailed a taxi and was driven straight to the Palatial Hotel. A couple of men were in the big hall, smilingly parrying the questions of half a dozen journalists. One of them shook his head as Silvervale pushed his way to the front.
‘Good Lord! Here’s another vulture. It’s no good, Mr Silvervale. We’ve just been telling your friends here that we don’t know anything. The doctors have not finished their examination yet.’
‘But it looks like suicide, Mr Forrester,’ interposed one of the crowd. ‘You’ve found a pistol.’
A knowing smile extended on Detective-Inspector Forrester’s genial countenance. ‘That won’t work, boys,’ he remonstrated with a reproving shake of his head. ‘You don’t draw me.’
Silvervale managed to get the detective aside. ‘You must give me five minutes,’ he whispered hastily. ‘I know who killed her. I came over in the same boat.’
Forrester thrust his hands deep in his trousers’ pockets. His brow puckered a little, and he studied the journalist’s face thoughtfully. For all his casual unworried air, his instinct rather than anything definite in the preliminary investigations had warned him that the case was likely to prove a difficult one. A detective—the real detective—is quite as willing to take short cuts in his work as any other business man.
‘The deuce you do,’ he said. ‘Come, let’s get out of this. Half a moment, Roker.’
His assistant disengaged himself from the other newspaper men, and Forrester led the way to the lift. At the third floor they emerged. Very quietly the door of the lift closed behind them, and half-unconsciously Silvervale found himself tiptoeing along the corridor, although in any event the soft carpet would have deadened all sound. A man standing stiffly against a white door flung it open as they approached. Within, a couple of men were bending over something on a couch, and two more were busy near the window overlooking the river. No one looked up. Forrester passed straight through to another and smaller room, and fitted his burly form to a basket arm-chair. He waved Silvervale to another one.
‘And now fire away, sonny,’ he said.
Concisely, in quick, succinct sentences, Silvervale told his story. As he concluded, Forrester drew a worn briar pipe from his pocket and packed it with a meditative forefinger.
‘Are you writing anything about this?’
‘Not a word. I know I may be wanted as a witness.’
‘That’s true.’ The inspector puffed contemplatively for a moment. ‘Then there’s this, I don’t mind telling you: That chap downstairs was right. There was a pistol—a five-chambered revolver—found clutched in that woman’s hand. But de Reszke is missing. He never came with her to the hotel.’
‘Then
