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"Your sincere friend, "L.J. McMURTRIE." As I read the signature McMurtrie's smiling mask-like face seemed suddenly to rise up in front of me, and all my old instincts of distrust and repulsion came to keep it company. So he was at the bungalow, and in little over an hour he would be here he and the mysterious friend who was "already considerably interested in our little company."
"What did the doctor tell you?" she asked at last. "He told me I could go up to London by the two-five," I said. "Is that all?" "Dr. McMurtrie," I reminded her, "is never recklessly communicative." Then I paused. "Still I should like to know the reason for the change of programme," I added. She raised her head and glanced half nervously, half defiantly at the door.
"Well," I said frankly, "I was thinking of looking up George just to see how he has been getting on in my absence. But apart from that I have every intention of playing straight with McMurtrie. It seems to me to be my only chance." A bell tinkled faintly somewhere away in the house, and Sonia got up off the bed.
At dusk, with a sense of weakness entirely new to her, she rose to undress, resting after each discarded piece of clothing. She could hear Mrs. McMurtrie passing through the outer hall, a tin bucket, on one of its frequent errands to Joe's place across the street, grating against the wall.
I did this partly with the object of leaving a pleasant impression behind me, and partly because I had a vague idea that it might come in handy to have some sort of headquarters in London where I was known and recognized as Mr. James Nicholson. Having settled up this piece of business I sat down and wrote to McMurtrie.
She's made up her mind he did the job all right; but, hang it all, one doesn't go and murder people without any conceivable reason." "I can conceive plenty of excellent reasons for murdering Marks," I said impartially. "I should hardly think they would have appealed to McMurtrie, though.
The first thing was to gain a moment or two to think in. "You realize what all this means, Sonia?" I said. "You're quite prepared to throw over your father and McMurtrie? You know how the doctor deals with people who betray him when he gets the chance?" "I am not afraid of them," she answered defiantly. "They are nothing to me; I hate them both and Hoffman too. It's you I want.
In the race to meet him, one of the motor-cars collided with an electric-light standard and was overturned, its occupant, Mr. Aeneas T. Muckleridge, being carried to hospital in a critical condition. Several San Francisco newspapers had published interviews with Lieutenant Smith, one of them ten columns long. Mr. McMurtrie chuckled as he read this dispatch in the shorthand of the news agency.
They took the matter up for me, and last night I got the full particulars I wanted about the man who had given away McMurtrie and his friends in St. Petersburg. There can be no question that he and Marks were the same person." I took a long a very long breath. "There remains," I said, "the Home Office."
I got up and walked to the end of the cockpit. "But good Lord!" I added, "this does complicate matters. You're absolutely certain it was McMurtrie you saw at Marks's flat?" "Absolutely," repeated Joyce with emphasis. "I should remember his face if I lived to be a hundred." I clenched my fists in a sudden spasm of anger. "There's some damned villainy underneath all this, Joyce," I said.
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