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Updated: June 21, 2025
My preceding remarks were a necessary foreword. I come to the year 1902, when I was established in Cairo, whither I had conveyed the results of the labor of many years and where I had taken up my quarters in a large native house not twenty yards from the Bâb-es-Zuwêla." Gatton stirred restlessly in his chair and my own curiosity knew no bounds.
"I shall do that without fail," said Gatton, "and some time to-day I should be obliged if you could provide me with the facts concerning the little cat-images which you said you had in your possession." "Certainly," I agreed. "You are still of the opinion that the mark upon the crate and the image of the cat-woman have an important bearing upon the crime?" "I don't doubt it," was the reply.
A considerable group, too, was gathered before the garage, but as Gatton and I descended and began to walk up the drive there was a general movement in our direction. "I wonder," said I, "if 'A, the wanted man, is among the crowd? One reads that murderers are irresistibly drawn back to the scene of their crimes."
We returned to the door of the ante-room, and side by side stood looking down at the telephone which had only been extracted from the grip of the dead man with so much difficulty. The Inspector stooped and took it up from the floor. The deadly gray mist was all but dissipated now, and together we stood staring stupidly at the telephone which Gatton held in his hand.
Without believing it to contain any very special significance as I had supposed, but merely attracted by the strangeness of the passage, I remembered how Gatton had harped upon Maspero's description of the attributes of Bâst. "Sometimes she plays with her victim as with a mouse," etc.
Isobel frowned in a troubled manner that awakened strange, wild longings. "I cannot make it out," she replied. "He appears to be keeping something back." "He is very ill-advised. He will certainly have to make up his mind to speak out when Inspector Gatton examines him.
In the dusk I could see it streaming out, that deathly mist, and creeping away across grass and flower-beds, right and left of the door. "Give it a chance to clear," said Gatton; "I fancy one good whiff would finish any man!" Even as he spoke the words the nature of this vapor suddenly occurred to me, and: "The Abbey Inn!" I whispered. "The Abbey Inn!"
Then, abruptly: "Did Sir Marcus ever visit any one who lived in College Road?" he demanded. Morris looked up wearily. "College Road?" he repeated. "Where is that, sir?" "It doesn't matter," said Gatton shortly, "if the name is unfamiliar to you. Had Sir Marcus a car?" "Not latterly, sir." "Any other servants?" "No.
But as you say, it certainly looks as though my visitor had sprung across a six-foot hedge!" "It's absolutely mad," said Gatton gloomily. "Far from helping us, it only plunges us deeper in the mire." We returned to the study, and: "You will have seen the daily papers?" asked the Inspector. I nodded. "Practically all of them. They give a hateful prominence to the name of Miss Merlin."
"Good heavens!" I cried. "At last I understand!" Gatton looked at me, smiling in grim triumph; and: "Dr. Damar Greefe has a residence somewhere within a quarter-mile radius of this house!" he declared. "He has betrayed himself! Then look here."
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