The Red Triangle: Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, InvestigatorMorrison, Arthur
General
The Red Triangle: Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator
Morrison, Arthur
Detective and mystery stories, English; Private investigators -- Fiction
"At last, on Thursday night, I saw Mayes again. Mr. Bowmore was here,
and when I left the house he troubled me much by coming after me. I was
obliged to tell him that I wished to be alone, and I was in a nervously
explosive state when I did it. He seemed reluctant to go; my anger
blazed out, and I violently ordered him off. From what he has told me it
seems that he followed me still, but lost sight of me near Penn's
Meadow. Well, be that as it may, I saw Mayes and the young artist again.
I watched from a rather awkward spot, and dusk was falling, so that I
could not see all that passed; but presently I was aware that Mayes was
making off by the road alone, and I followed him.
"From that moment I think I really was mad, though my madness did not
drive me to attack him at once. I had a feeling of curiosity to see
where he would go, and a curious cruel idea of letting him run for a
little first--as a cat feels, I suppose, with a mouse. You may judge
that I was not in my normal state of mind from the fact that all through
yesterday and part of to-day I never as much as thought of telegraphing
home to say that I had gone to London. For it was to London I followed
him. I took no ticket at the station--I got on the platform by stealth,
and entered the train unobserved, for he and one boy were the only
passengers, and I feared attracting attention. It was easy enough, in
such a station as Redfield, and I paid my fare at London. And after all
I lost him! Lost him in London!"
"How?"
"Like a fool. I saw him enter a house, and waited. Followed him again,
and waited at another. I might have flung him into the river from the
Embankment, and I refrained. And then--whether it began at a dark corner
or in a group of people I cannot tell, but I suddenly discovered that I
was following a stranger--a stranger of about Mayes's form and stature.
It was what I should have expected, and provided for, in London streets
at night!
"If I have been mad, it was then I was worst. I suppose by that time it
must have been too late to get back home, but I never thought of that. I
ran the streets the whole night, like a fool, hunting for Mayes. I kept
on all day yesterday. I waited and watched hours at the two houses he
had visited; and it was not till early this morning that I flung myself
on a bed in a private hotel in Euston Road. I slept a little, and my
paroxysm was over. Perhaps I am more fortunate than I am disposed to
think, since I am as yet in no danger of trial for murder."
This passionate, wayward, stricken man was plainly the object of
fascinated interest to Hewitt. My friend waited a moment, and then
said--"The houses he called at--I should like to know them. And where
you lost sight of him."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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