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There were a couple of letters, one from the Courier office, and another from Harding, Lord Southbourne's private secretary, and both important in their way. Harding wrote that Southbourne would be in town at the end of the week, en route for Scotland, and wished to see me if I were fit for service. "A soft job this time, a trip to the States, so you'll be able to combine business with pleasure."
I did take Lord Southbourne's advice, partly; for in giving Sir George Lucas a minute account of my movements on the night of the murder, I did not prevaricate, but I made two reservations, neither of which, so far as I could see, affected my own case in the least. I made no mention of the conversation I had with the old Russian in my own flat; or of the incident of the boat.
May I ask where you were going?" I told him, and he nodded. "So you're one of Lord Southbourne's young men? Thought I knew your face, but couldn't quite place you," he responded. "Hope you won't meet with the same fate as your predecessor. A sad affair, that; we got the news on Friday. Sounds like much the same sort of thing as this" he jerked his head towards the ceiling "except that Mr.
If you see him between now and Monday, when you must start, I advise you not to mention your destination to him, unless you've already done so. He was at the Savage Club dinner to-night, wasn't he?" One of Southbourne's foibles was to pose as a kind of "Sherlock Holmes," but I was not in the least impressed by this pretension to omniscience.
I was taken straight to Lord Southbourne's sanctum, a handsomely furnished, but almost ostentatiously business-like apartment. Southbourne himself, seated at a big American desk, was making hieroglyphics on a sheet of paper before him while he dictated rapidly to Harding, his private secretary, who manipulated a typewriter close by.
Lord Southbourne's heavy, clean-shaven face was impassive as ever, and he greeted me with a casual nod. "Hello, Wynn, you've been in the wars, eh? I've seen Freeman. He says you were just about at the last gasp when he got hold of you, and is pluming himself no end on having brought you through so well." "So he ought!" I conceded cordially.
For Lord Southbourne's evidence disposed of the theory the police had formed that you had returned earlier in the evening, and that when you did go in and found the door open your conduct was a mere feint to avert suspicion. And then there was the entire lack of motive, and the derivative evidence that more than one person and one of them a woman had been engaged in ransacking the rooms.
"You went back to Russia in search of me! I was quite sure of it in my mind, though Mary declared you were off on another special correspondent affair for Lord Southbourne, and he said the same; he's rather a nice man, isn't he, and Lady Southbourne's a dear! But I knew somehow he wasn't speaking the truth. And you've been in the wars, you poor boy!
I knew Southbourne's peculiarities fairly well, and therefore waited for him to speak. We smoked in silence for a time, till he remarked abruptly: "Carson's dead." "Dead!" I ejaculated, in genuine consternation. I had known and liked Carson; one of the cleverest and most promising of Southbourne's "young men."
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