Detective and mystery stories; England -- Fiction; Extortion -- Fiction; Gangs -- Fiction
“Where are you sleeping, by the way?” he said as he paused at the
entrance of his room, after saying good-night.
“I’m in the next room,” said Jack, and Parr nodded, closed the door,
locking it behind him.
He heard Jack’s door shut, and proceeded to divest himself of part of
his clothing. He made no attempt to undress, but taking from his
battered suit-case an old silk dressing-gown, he wrapped it about him,
turned out the light and, walking to the windows, pulled up the three
blinds.
The night was fairly light; there was sufficient to enable him to find
his way back to the bed, on which he lay, pulling the eiderdown over
him. There is a method by which the worst cases of insomnia-haunted
patients may obtain sleep, though it is one which I believe is very
little known. It is to attempt deliberately to keep one’s eyes open in
the dark.
Mr. Parr succeeded only by turning on his side and staring out of the
nearest window, which he had opened a little.
Towards morning he rose suddenly and stepped noiselessly towards the
nearest window; he had heard a faint whirr of sound, a noise which a
smoothly-running motor-car makes, but now there was a profound
silence. He went to the washstand, and rubbed his face with cold
water, drying it leisurely. Then he walked back to the window, pulled
up a chair and sat so that he commanded whatever view there was of the
avenue leading to the front of the house.
He had to wait nearly half an hour before he saw a dark figure steal
from the shadow of the trees, only to disappear again in a deeper
shadow. He momentarily glimpsed it again as it passed out of his range
of vision into the shadow of the house itself.
The inspector moved softly from the room and, crossing the landing,
went down the stairs. The main door of the house was bolted and
locked, and it was some time before he could open it. When he stepped
out into the night there was nobody in sight. He crept stealthily
along the path which ran parallel with the house, but found no
intruder, and he had reached the main entrance again when he heard the
sound of the motor fading gradually--the midnight visitor had gone.
He closed and bolted the door and went back to his room. This visit
puzzled him. It was clear that the man, whoever he was, had not seen
Parr, nor could he have been certain that he was under observation. He
must have come and gone almost immediately.
It was not until he came down to breakfast in the morning that the
mystery of the visitation was revealed.
Jack was standing before the fire reading a crumpled paper which
looked as if it had been posted up and torn. It was the size of a
small poster and hand-printed. Before he saw its contents, Parr knew
that it was a message from the Crimson Circle.
“What do you think of this?” asked Jack, looking round as the
detective came in. “We found half a dozen of these posters pasted or
tacked on to the trees of the drive, and this one was stuck up under
my window!”
The detective read:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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