Ellery promised to devote the day to an attempt to trace his missing acquaintance, and the inspector departed, with a last word of advice given as by one man of the world to another. But Ellery had an unpleasant feeling that until that fellow—what the devil was his name?—was run to earth, his movements would be carefully watched by the police. Which was not at all the development he had been expecting.
The Chelsea Arts Club, where he had certainly sometimes met the fellow, seemed the best place to begin the search, and Ellery accordingly went round there to make his inquiries. But he drew blank. No one could place a fellow who lived in Chelsea—probably an actor—whose name was neither Foster nor Forrest nor Forrester, but something more or less like that. Everyone he asked said it was too vague a description, or offered him suggestions which he at once rejected. Ellery began to feel that his job was not going to be easy. As he left the Club he was more than a little depressed, especially as he felt sure that a heavy-footed individual, who kept some distance behind, was under instructions to follow him. The police boots were unmistakable; he noticed them across the road as he came down the Club steps, and turning round a moment later, he saw their wearer following none too discreetly in his wake. “If that is the police idea of shadowing a man,” he said to himself, “I don’t think much of it. But perhaps they don’t mind my knowing.” Then he considered whether it was worth while to try giving his watcher the slip. But that, he reflected, would only make things worse, and get him suspected all the more. He must let himself be followed, and he might as well take it cheerfully. “With catlike tread, upon the foe we steal,” he whistled, and laughed as he heard the feet of the law clumping along behind him.
XIII
An Arrest
Inspector Blaikie had made arrangements to see Superintendent Wilson after lunch; and at half-past two they were closeted together in the superintendent’s office. The decision about the inquest could be no longer delayed: it was imperative that the police should make up their minds how far they would place the facts which they had discovered before the coroner’s jury. The police nearly always hate a coroner’s jury—at least in cases in which murder is suspected or known. They dislike the premature disclosure of their hardly gathered clues before their case is complete: they dread the misdirected inquisitiveness of some juryman who may unknowingly give the criminal just the hint he wants. Above all, they object to looking like fools; and whether they present an incomplete case, or withhold the information they possess, that is very likely to be their fate in the presence of the good men and true and in the columns of the newspapers the next morning.
The Brooklyn case had created an immense popular excitement. Neither Prinsep nor George Brooklyn was much known to the general public; but Sir Vernon was still a great popular figure, and pictures of Isabelle Raven—Mrs. George Brooklyn—remembered as the finest actress of a few years ago, had been published in almost every paper. The reporters had, indeed, little enough to go upon; for after the first sensational story of the discovery of the bodies, they had been put off with very scanty information. Nothing connecting Walter Brooklyn with the crime had yet been published; but Inspector Blaikie knew that, as the club servants had fastened on that side of the story, it was certain to reach some of the papers before many days passed. Still, it was a moot point whether or not it would be best to keep all reference to Walter Brooklyn out of the inquest proceedings, if it were possible to do so.
Inspector Blaikie would usually have been inclined to favour any plan which aimed at keeping the coroner’s jury in the dark. That was, in his view, a part of the duty of a good police officer. But, on this occasion, he had become so firmly convinced of Walter Brooklyn’s guilt that he was set on a different method of proceeding. What he wanted was to be allowed to arrest Walter Brooklyn at once, in advance of the inquest, and then to tell the coroner’s jury the full story of the evidence against him, in the hope that its publication in the Press would result in the offering of corroborative evidence from outside. He felt more and more certain that Brooklyn had committed both the murders; but he was not so sanguine as to suppose that he had yet enough evidence to assure a favourable verdict—that is, a verdict against Walter—from a jury. There was at least a specious case to be made out in favour of the view that Prinsep had killed George, and a skilful barrister would make much of this, using also every shred of evidence for the view that George had killed Prinsep, in the hope of so muddling the mind of the jury that they would not dare to bring in any verdict other than “Not Guilty.” But only a very little further evidence would give him enough to hang Walter Brooklyn on one if not both of the charges. It was worth while even to submit to the foolish heckling of a coroner’s jury, if by doing so he could hope to get the further evidence he wanted. His case so far, he recognised, depended on an inference; and it would be just like a jury to turn him down. Juries, in his view, always did the wrong thing if you gave them half a chance. Still, in this case it was worth while, in the hope of getting further evidence, even to endure their folly.
This reasoning of Inspector Blaikie’s failed to commend itself to Superintendent Wilson. He, too, saw that the case against Walter Brooklyn was
