“'That is easily explained,' Chetney answered. 'As I finished dinner
to-night at the hotel, I received a note from her from this address. In
it she said she had just learned of my arrival, and begged me to come to
her at once. She wrote that she was in great and present trouble, dying
of an incurable illness, and without friends or money. She begged me,
for the sake of old times, to come to her assistance. During the last
two years in the jungle all my former feeling for Zichy has utterly
passed away, but no one could have dismissed the appeal she made in that
letter. So I came here, and found her, as you have seen her, quite as
beautiful as she ever was, in very good health, and, from the look of
the house, in no need of money.
“'I asked her what she meant by writing me that she was dying in a
garret, and she laughed, and said she had done so because she was
afraid, unless I thought she needed help, I would not try to see her.
That was where we were when you arrived. And now,' Chetney added, 'I
will say good-by to her, and you had better return home. No, you can
trust me, I shall follow you at once. She has no influence over me now,
but I believe, in spite of the way she has used me, that she is, after
her queer fashion, still fond of me, and when she learns that this
good-by is final there may be a scene, and it is not fair to her that
you should be here. So, go home at once, and tell the governor that I am
following you in ten minutes.'
“'That,' said Arthur, 'is the way we parted. I never left him on more
friendly terms. I was happy to see him alive again, I was happy to think
he had returned in time to make up his quarrel with my father, and I was
happy that at last he was shut of that woman. I was never better pleased
with him in my life.' He turned to Inspector Lyle, who was sitting at
the foot of the bed, taking notes of all he told us.
“'Why, in the name of common-sense,' he cried, 'should I have chosen
that moment, of all others, to send my brother back to the grave?' For
a moment the Inspector did not answer him. I do not know if any of you
gentlemen are acquainted with Inspector Lyle, but if you are not, I can
assure you that he is a very remarkable man. Our firm often applies
to him for aid, and he has never failed us; my father has the greatest
possible respect for him. Where he has the advantage over the ordinary
police-official is in the fact that he possesses imagination. He
imagines himself to be the criminal, imagines how he would act under the
same circumstances, and he imagines to such purpose that he generally
finds the man he wants. I have often told Lyle that if he had not been a
detective he would have made a great success as a poet or a playwright.
“When Arthur turned on him, Lyle hesitated for a moment, and then told
him exactly what was the case against him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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