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Page 12
I looked again. Then I fathomed the riddle that had puzzled me in the
dead face of the stranger in my room.
It was not the face of Francis that his features suggested.
It was mine!
* * * * *
The next moment I found myself in No. 33. I could see no sign of the key
of the room; Semlin must have dropped it in his fall, so it behoved me
to make haste for fear of any untoward interruption. I had not yet heard
eleven strike on the clock.
The stranger's hat and overcoat lay on a chair. The hat was from
Scott's: there was nothing except a pair of leather gloves in the
overcoat pockets.
A bag, in size something between a small kit-bag and a large handbag,
stood open on the table. It contained a few toilet necessaries, a pair
of pyjamas, a clean shirt, a pair of slippers, ... nothing of importance
and not a scrap of paper of any kind.
I went through everything again, looked in the sponge bag, opened the
safety razor case, shook out the shirt, and finally took everything out
of the bag and stacked the things on the table.
At the bottom of the bag I made a strange discovery. The interior of
the bag was fitted with that thin yellow canvas-like material with which
nearly all cheap bags, like this one was, are lined. At the bottom of
the bag an oblong piece of the lining had apparently been torn clean
out. The leather of the bag showed through the slit. Yet the lining
round the edges of the gap showed no fraying, no trace of rough usage.
On the contrary, the edges were pasted neatly down on the leather.
I lifted the bag and examined it. As I did so I saw lying on the table
beside it an oblong of yellow canvas. I picked it up and found the under
side stained with paste and the brown of the leather.
It was the missing piece of lining and it was stiff with something that
crackled inside it.
I slit the piece of canvas up one side with my penknife. It contained
three long fragments of paper, a thick, expensive, highly glazed paper.
Top, bottom and left-hand side of each was trim and glossy: the fourth
side showed a broken edge as though it had been roughly cut with a
knife. The three slips of paper were the halves of three quarto sheets
of writing, torn in two, lengthways, from top to bottom.
At the top of each slip was part of some kind of crest in gold, what, it
was not possible to determine, for the crest had been in the centre of
the sheet and the cut had gone right through it.
The letter was written in English but the name of the recipient as also
the date was on the missing half.
Somewhere in the silence of the night I heard a door bang. I thrust the
slips of paper in their canvas covering into my trousers pocket. I must
not be found in that room. With trembling hands I started to put the
things back in the bag. Those slips of paper, I reflected as I worked,
at least rent the veil of mystery enveloping the corpse that lay
stiffening in the next room. This, at any rate, was certain: German or
American or hyphenate, Henry Semlin, manufacturer and spy, had voyaged
from America to England not for the purposes of trade but to get hold of
that mutilated document now reposing in my pocket. Why he had only got
half the letter and what had happened to the other half was more than I
could say ... it sufficed for me to know that its importance to somebody
was sufficient to warrant a journey on its behalf from one side to the
other of the Atlantic.
As I opened the bag my fingers encountered a hard substance, as of
metal, embedded in the slack of the lining in the joints of the mouth.
At first I thought it was a coin, then I felt some kind of clasp or
fastening behind it and it seemed to be a brooch. Out came my pocket
knife again and there lay a small silver star, about as big as a
regimental cap badge, embedded in the thin canvas. It bore an
inscription. In stencilled letters I read:
O2 G
Abt. VII.
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