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Parrish's affairs than anybody else, and I shall be very glad if you will stay on and help me. You know I have been left sole executrix...." "Miss Trevert," the little man stammered in his embarrassment, "this is handsome of you. I surely thought you would have wished to make your own arrangements, appoint your own secretaries...." Mr. Jeekes broke off and looked at her, blinking hard.
He was not a little surprised, therefore, to hear Jeekes ask him what he would take. Bruce said he would take some coffee. "Have a liqueur? Have a cigar?" said Jeekes, turning to Bruce from the somnolent waiter who had answered the bell.
There was a strange eagerness, a sort of over-done cordiality, in the invitation which contrasted so strongly with the secretary's habits that Robin felt dimly suspicious. He suddenly formed the idea that Mr. Jeekes wanted to pump him. He refused the liqueur, but accepted a cigar.
Jeekes. In a narrow, drowsy side street at Rotterdam, bisected by a somnolent canal, stood flush with the red-brick sidewalk a small clean house. Wire blinds affixed to the windows of its ground and first floors gave it a curious blinking air as though its eyes were only half open. To the neat green front door was affixed a large brass plate inscribed with the single name: "Schulz."
I mean to know. And I want you, Mr. Jeekes, to help me to find out," Something stirred ever so faintly in the remote recesses of the billiard-room. A loose board or something creaked softly and was silent. "What was that?" the girl called out sharply. "Who's there?" Mr. Jeekes got up and walked over to the door. It was ajar. He closed it. "Just a board creaking," he said as he resumed his seat.
I was alone at Harkings with him, I remember, Jeekes was up at Sheffield and the other secretaries were away ill or something, and in the rush of dealing with this enormous mail I slit one of these blue envelopes open with the rest. I discovered what I had done only after I had got all the letters sorted out, this one with the rest. So I went straight to old H.P. and told him. By Jove!"
You tried to force my investigations into an entirely new path. That deepened my suspicions. I believed it to be my duty to ascertain your movements after leaving Harkings. But then I heard Jeekes make an apparently gratuitously false statement to Miss Trevert with an implication against you. That, to some extent, cleared you in my eyes.
"Jeekes was pretty 'cute," he said. "Before letting the girl know he was in Rotterdam, he wanted to find out what she wanted here and whom she knew. Remember, he had no means of knowing if the girl suspected him or not ..." "So he devised this trick of impersonating Mr. Schulz on the telephone, eh?" "Bah!" broke in the Chief; "I bet that was Marbran's idea.
"We must get that letter from Harkings," he said presently. "Jeekes will have it. We can do nothing until ..." His voice died away. Bruce, sunk in one of the big leather armchairs, was astonished to see him slip quickly away from the window and ensconce himself behind one of the chintz curtains. "Here, Bruce," Robin called softly across the room. "Just come here.
The nerves!" he said impressively. "Harley Street, not Mr. Greve, will supply the motive to this sad affair, believe me!" With that he accompanied the young man to the door of the club and from the vestibule watched him sally forth into the rain of Pall Mall. Then Mr. Jeekes turned to the hall porter. "Please get me Stevenish one-three-seven," he said, "it's a trunk call.