“How did that come there?” asked Leslie.
“She fired an automatic—five or six shots in rapid succession—and got the backfire. One shot wouldn’t have burnt her; it must have been at least five. Look!” He showed his own hand, and a raw red mark, faintly tinged with black. “I was firing an automatic this morning to see what would happen, and I’ve got exactly the same mark as she has. I’m only making a guess, Leslie, but my guess is that Miss or Mrs. Druze was killed in self-defence; that she started the gunplay and got the worst of it.”
Leslie caught her breath.
“Then where is the other body?” she asked quickly.
He stared at her open-mouthed.
“Other body?”
“She killed somebody first,” said Leslie quickly. “Killed or desperately wounded. Such a woman as Druze would not carry a pistol unless she knew how to use it. If she knew how to use it and fired first, then somebody was badly hurt.”
The old man took off his hat and scratched his head.
“That’s the natural conclusion to reach,” he said; “and I didn’t reach it. And why I didn’t reach it I don’t know. Just let me think this out, will ye?”
The silence was unbroken until they reached Scotland Yard.
“I’m still thinking it out,” he said dismally as he stepped out of the cab behind her and paid the taximan.
There was a bearded man in the hall, doctor written in every line of him. He was talking to the officer at the desk and evidently Coldwell was being pointed out to him, for he walked to the door to meet the inspector as he entered.
“You’re Mr. Coldwell? My name is Simmson. I am Dr. Simmson, of Marylebone Road.”
“Yes, doctor?” said Coldwell, politely attentive.
“A friend of mine has suggested that I should go to Scotland Yard and report rather a curious circumstance,” he said awkwardly. “I have never done such a thing before, and I’m a little at sea as to how I should begin. But I have a patient who is suffering from a gunshot wound, and I am not quite satisfied as to how she received her injury, which is a slight one”—Coldwell was all attention now—“through the calf; no artery has been injured. And really, I feel I’m being terribly disloyal to a patient—”
“What is her name?” asked Coldwell.
“Mrs. Greta Gurden,” was the reply.
XI
Greta Gurden occupied an apartment on the first floor of a house in Portman Crescent. Hers was one of those artistic little flats that reflected every taste but her own. She slept in a red lacquer bed, ornamented by golden devils, a bargain acquired many years before in the Caledonian Market, and renovated by her own hands. Life is rather a tragedy for the lonely woman; there was a shadowy husband very much in the background, but he had either run away from her or was in a lunatic asylum or something equally unsatisfactory. She was one of the thousands who were endeavouring to keep a ten establishment on a seven and a half income. By profession she was a journalist; edited a mildly scurrilous little paper called Mayfair Gossip, which enjoyed a very limited circulation, and in truth took up very little of her time. It was certainly not in the paper’s interest that she fostered the delusion that her life was one of hectic gaiety. For she was to be seen occasionally at the most exclusive night clubs; more frequently at less exclusive establishments of the same order, her visitations being governed entirely by her wealth and the taste of her escort. And numerically she had many friends. Her expansiveness and lack of reticence, which had been tersely and uncharitably condensed into the vulgar word “gush,” however it might sicken the more sophisticated, was very pleasant to those who discovered from her for the first time how important or good-looking or well-dressed they were, what taste, discrimination, or tact they displayed upon every conceivable occasion, and how anxiously or impatiently Greta was looking forward to their next meeting.
There were young men who took her out to dinner or to supper or to dances; and there were middle-aged men, fathers of families, whose hearts she fluttered with the promise of adventure never to be fulfilled, who escorted her to the less expensive places of popular amusement. There were, too, women who hovered everlastingly on that no-man’s-land between Suburbia and Mayfair, who courted her society and influence, under the mistaken impression that she had the entrée to the most select circles.
Mayfair Gossip was entirely the property of Anita Bellini, and it was an unprofitable concern, a fact Anita never failed to emphasize when she called on a Friday for her weekly stipend, her only regular source of income. The Princess was good in other ways: she gave her an occasional dinner, a discarded dress or two, marched her off to afternoon concerts, and employed her as a sort of unpaid secretary. Occasionally, windfalls came the way of Greta Gurden: fifty pounds here and there for some little service which she had rendered. And she had always a use for the money—new curtains to buy, a fascinating Chinese cabinet, or something that looked like a fascinating Chinese cabinet, a carved ivory Madonna, a fair copy of a master’s art. She had a passion for picking up entirely valueless articles, and her dining-room was cluttered up with imitation oak, Birmingham-made suits of chain armour, Benares brass from
