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"'I am satisfied, said Dr. van Heerden, 'that the man already contemplated the deed, and when I voiced my suspicions in the palm-court he decided upon the action. The presence in his pocket of cyanide one of the deadliest and quickest of poisons suggests that he had the project in his mind. I did not see his action or, of course, I should have stopped him!"
"Excuse me a moment," he said. He passed with rapid strides from the room, down the broad stairway and into the palm-court. Van Heerden had gone. The explanation flashed upon him and he hurried to the spot where the doctor had stood. On the tessellated floor was a little patch no bigger than a saucer which had been recently washed. He beckoned the manager.
The hotel and the café of the Grand Alliance was London's newest rendezvous. Its great palm-court was crowded at the tea-hour and if, as the mysterious Mr. Beale had hinted, any danger was to be apprehended from Dr. van Heerden, it could not come to her in that most open of public places.
The palm-court was a spacious marble hall, a big circle of polished pillars supporting the dome, through the tinted glass of which the light was filtered in soft hues upon the marble floor below. "Doctor," she said, suddenly remembering, "I have been reading quite a lot about you to-day." He raised his eyebrows. "About me?" She nodded, smiling mischievously.
"Oliva Cresswell!" He made a movement toward her but van Heerden barred his way. She heard Jackson say something in a strangled voice and heard van Heerden's sharp "What!" and there was a fierce exchange of words. The attention of the few people in the palm-court had been attracted to the unusual spectacle of two men engaged in what appeared to be a struggle. "Sit down, sit down, you fool!
He was evidently on his way to see John Millinborn the day my unhappy friend was murdered, and it was the recognition of his daughter in the palm-court of the Grand Alliance which produced a fainting-fit to which he was subject." "But how could he recognize the daughter? Had he seen her before?" For answer Kitson took from his pocket a leather folder and opened it. There were two photographs.
"They are dancing in the theatre. Will you come, Mademoiselle Dorise?" "Delighted," she said, with an inward sigh, for the dressed-up Parisian always bored her. She rose quickly, and promising her mother to be back soon, she linked her arm to that of the notorious gambler and passed through the great palm-court into the theatre.
He stood on the top of the steps above the palm-court to wish them good-bye, leaning on his stick. Helene turned back and waved her hand. "He is unchanged," she murmured, "yet I fear that there must be trouble." "Why? He seemed cheerful enough," her husband remarked. She dropped her voice a little. "Lucille is in London. She is staying at Dorset House." Mr. Sabin was deep in thought.
She was stunned by the tragedy which had happened under her eyes and could offer no evidence which in any way assisted the police in their subsequent investigation, the sum of which was ably set forth in the columns of the Post Record. "The tragedy which occurred in the Palm-Court of the Grand Alliance Hotel yesterday must be added to the already long list of London's unravelled mysteries.
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