room and carefully closed the door. Sitting at his desk he lifted the receiver from the telephone.
‘Get the Palatial Hotel,’ he ordered. ‘Hello! That the Palatial? Is the Princess Petrovska there? What? Left last night at ten o’clock? Did she say where she was going? No, I see. Good-bye.’
He scribbled a few words on a slip of paper, and touching the bell gave it to the man who answered. ‘Send that to St Petersburg at once.’
It was a communication to the Chief of the Russian police, asking that inquiries should be made as to the antecedents of the Princess.
For the next three hours men were coming rapidly in and out of the superintendent’s office, receiving instructions and making reports. Practically the whole of the six hundred men of the C.I.D. were engaged on the case, for there was no avenue of investigation so slender but that there might be something at the end of it. Neither Foyle nor his lieutenants were men to leave anything to chance. Green was seated opposite to him, discussing the progress they had made.
The superintendent leaned back wearily in his chair. Someone handed him a slim envelope. He tore it open and slowly studied the cipher in which the message was written. It read:
Silinsky, Chief of Police, St Petersburg.
To Foyle, Superintendent C.I.D., London.
Woman you mention formerly Lola Rachael, believed born Paris;
formerly on stage, Vienna; married Prince Petrovska, 1898.
Husband died suddenly 1900. Travels much.
No further particulars known.
Foyle stroked his chin gravely. ‘Formerly Lola Rachael,’ he murmured. ‘And Sir Ralph recognised the miniature as little Lola of Vienna. She’s worth looking after. We must find her, Green. What about this man Ivan?’
‘No trace of him yet, sir, but I don’t think he can give us the slip. He hadn’t much time to get away. By the way, sir, what do you think of Sir Ralph?’
‘I don’t know. He’s keeping something back for some reason. You’d better have him shadowed, Green. Go yourself, and take a good man with you. He mustn’t be let out of sight night or day. I may tackle him again later on.’
‘Very good, sir. Waverley’s still at Grosvenor Gardens. Will you be going back there?’
‘I don’t know. I want to look through the records of the Convict Supervision Office for the last ten years. I have an idea that I may strike something.’
Green was too wise a man to ask questions of his chief. He slipped from the room. Half an hour later Foyle dashed out of the room hatless, and, picking up a taxicab, drove at top speed to Grosvenor Gardens. He was greeted at the door by Lomont.
‘What is it?’ he demanded, the excitement of the detective communicating itself to him. ‘Have you carried the case any further?’
‘I don’t know,’ replied the detective. ‘I must see the body again. Come up with me.’
In the death-chamber he carefully locked the door. A heavy ink-well stood on the desk. He twisted up a piece of paper and dipped it in. Then, approaching the murdered man, he smeared the fingers of his right hand with the blackened paper and pressed them lightly on a piece of blotting paper. The secretary, in utter bewilderment, watched him compare the prints with a piece of paper he took from his pocket.
‘What is it?’ he repeated again.
‘Mr Lomont,’ replied the detective gravely, ‘I wish I knew. Unless our whole system of identification is wrong—and that is incredible—that man who lies dead there is not Robert Grell.’
LOMONT reeled dizzily, and his hand sought the support of the wall. To him Foyle’s voice sounded unreal. He stared at the detective as though doubtful of his sanity. His life had been hitherto ordered, placid. That there were such things as crimes, murders, detectives, he knew. He had read of them in the newspapers. But hitherto they had only been names to him—something to make the paper more readable.
He was a thin-faced man of about thirty, with somewhat sallow cheeks on which there was now a hectic flush, a high-pitched forehead that seemed to have contracted into a perpetual frown, and colourless eyes. The son of a well-known barrister, he had tried his luck in the City after leaving Cambridge. In a few years the respectable income he had started with had dwindled under the drain of his speculations, and it was then that a friend had recommended him to Robert Grell, who was about to take up his residence in England. James Lomont had jumped at the chance, for the salary was respectable and would enable him to maintain a certain footing in society.
‘Not Robert Grell!’ he echoed incredulously.
Foyle fancied that there was some quality other than incredulity in the tone, but decided that he was mistaken. The young man’s nerves were shaken up. So far as time would allow he had gathered all there was to know about him. Lomont had not escaped the network of inquiry that was being woven about all who had associated with Robert Grell.
No fewer than three chapters in a book the Criminal Investigation Department had commenced compiling were devoted to him. They lay with others neatly typed and indexed in Heldon Foyle’s office.
One was his signed statement of events on the night of the tragedy. The last time he had seen Grell alive was at half-past six, when his employer had left for the St Jermyn’s Club. He himself had gone to the Savoy Theatre, and, returning some time after eleven, had let himself in with his own key and gone straight to bed. He had only been aroused when the police took possession of the house. The third was headed: ‘Inquiries as to career of, and corroboration of statements made by, James Lomont’.
The curtains had remained drawn, and only a dim light filtered through into the room. Foyle lifted a little green-shaded electric lamp from the table, and switched on the light so that it fell on the face of the dead man.
‘Look,’ he said, in a quiet voice, ‘do you recognise your chief?’
The young man flung back his shoulders with a jerk, as though overcoming his own feelings, and approached the body with evident distaste. His hands, slender as a woman’s, were tight-clenched, and his breath came and went in nervous spasms. For a moment he gazed, and then shook his head weakly.
‘It is not,’ he whispered with dry lips. ‘There is an old scar across the temple. Mr Grell’s face was not disfigured.’ He stretched out a hand and clutched the superintendent nervously by the shoulder. ‘Who is this man, Mr Foyle? What does it all mean? Where is Mr Grell?’
Foyle’s hand had stolen to his chin and he rubbed it vigorously.
‘I don’t know what it means,’ he confessed irritably. ‘You know as much as I do now. This man is not Robert Grell, though he is astonishingly like him. Now, Mr Lomont, I rely on you not to breathe a word of this to a living soul until I give you permission. This secret must remain between our two selves for the time being.’
‘Certainly.’
