The figure of Salome came before me as I had seen her the night before,
pursuing the hooded Inquisitor, luring him to dance with her, and
keeping a jealous eye on his movements when he was engaged with other
partners. Astounded as I was to learn that the mysterious dancer was
no other than the dead man’s step-daughter, it did not take me long to
reconcile the intelligence with her remarkable character, as revealed
in the course of the morning’s investigations.
I began to see depths in the strange girl’s nature of which she herself
had hardly been aware. It was not only indignation on her mother’s
behalf that had prompted her to trace her step-father’s doings. It was
not merely curiosity that had brought her to the Domino Club to watch
his movements. Her fierce denunciation of the women patients whom she
had accused of depraving him had been inspired by a secret feeling of
which she was herself unconscious. The man had fascinated her unawares.
Without knowing it she had been jealous on her own account as well as
her mother’s. In a strange ignorance of her own feelings which was yet
a natural result of the relationship in which she had been brought up,
she had continued to believe herself his enemy. She had imagined that
hatred was the passion that inspired her to disguise herself and come
to watch him, to dance with him time after time, and to pursue him with
restless vigilance when he transferred his attentions to anyone else.
Meanwhile it seemed to me that this discovery offered me a chance of
diverting inquiry from myself and from one in whom I was far more
deeply interested than in Sarah Neobard. I must try to concentrate Sir
Frank Tarleton’s suspicions on Salome, and induce him to pass over the
other characters to whom his attention had been drawn by the evidence
of the waiter Gerard and the entries in the books.
I entered his study again to find him engaged in drawing up a list of
names. I let my eye steal towards the paper as I approached and my
heart sank as I read the one just written--“_Lady Violet Bredwardine_.”
“The mystery is solved, apparently,” I announced in a tone of
confidence. “The Salome costume has been traced to Miss Neobard.”
To my discomfiture the consultant merely gave the nod of one who hears
what he expected.
“Poor girl; I was afraid of it.”
He went on writing without further remark, while I dropped into a chair
and looked on with sickly apprehension. At last he looked up.
“Listen, Cassilis. I have made a complete list of the names which
appear in the members’ roll and also in the appointment-book with
numbers attached to them. We have still to find out what the numbers
mean, of course. Have you formed any theory on that point?”
I shook my head. I was honestly ignorant, and if I had been able to
make any guess I should have refrained, for fear of leading Tarleton in
the very direction I was anxious to turn him away from.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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