MMEDIATELY Paul Harley found himself alone in the study, he proceeded to lock the door. Then, seating himself in the chair which Van Dean habitually occupied, he closed his eyes and endeavored for a moment to concentrate upon this new development in the case.
It was characteristic of Westbury, of whom Joyce Gayford had said that he “had a magnificent drive, but intellectually was negligible,” to lock an Airedale terrier in this room of all others. Here, so far as he could judge at the moment, lay the hub of the mystery. Here, in this room, was the explanation of why the S. Group had turned aside temporarily from their gigantic intrigues and had detailed no less formidable a personality than the Mandarin K to do—what? Presumably, to recover from Burton Van Dean something of such value to their schemes that no crime was too great to deter them in its recovery.
Sitting thus in reflection, his pipe, long since cold, clenched between his teeth, Paul Harley became suddenly aware of that odd lowering of the temperature which unfailingly advised him of evil activity. He opened his eyes and looked sharply about him. The body of the dog had been removed by his orders, but there was a bloodstain on the carpet not far from his feet, where the animal had lain.
He endeavored to reconstruct the events which had led up to the death of the dog. Someone, by using a duplicate key to the door which opened upon the corridor of the north wing, or by means of the ivy which formed a natural ladder from the shrubbery beneath to the open window, had entered Van Dean's study that evening. The intruder, he must conclude, had been unaware of the presence of the dog. The animal, with the instinct of its breed, had attacked instantly. Recognizing detection to be imminent, the unknown visitor had stabbed the dog to the heart and decamped, probably by the same route by which he had come. So far, it was clear enough.
His leaving so valuable a clue as the jewelled knife, might be accounted for by panic. It is easier to drive a keen blade into a thorax than to withdraw it. The explanation did not satisfy Harley, but it sufficed for the moment. Clearly, then, a member of the S. Group had been in the Abbey that evening. Came the unanswerable question: For what?
He had been through Van Dean's notes, he had examined in detail every tangible record of his dreadful sojourn on the borders of Tibet. The importance of his discoveries it were impossible to minimize; and unless the death of the man who held such dangerous knowledge were the object of the organization, to what other end had the S. Group made this house the focus of a dangerous part of its activities?
Again, presuming the death of Van Dean to be their object, why had the unknown visitor penetrated to the study that evening, when it must have been evident from an outside survey that Van Dean was not at his table?
Harley found himself baffled. The safe had not been. tampered with. Indeed, so far as he could learn, nothing had been disturbed in the room. Yet, that he was near to the heart of the mystery, that queer sixth sense of his insisted urgently. It was all very baffling. He mentally reviewed his recent interview with Mohammed Khán, the Indian butler, and that, less satisfactory, with Wu Chang, Van Dean's Chinese servant.
The American's eccentricities irritated him. For a man who knew himself to have incurred the enmity of a powerful Eastern group to retain in his household a native of Rajputana, and one of Canton, was not in accordance with common sense. But eccentricity must be excused, he reflected, in a man distinguished alike by his intellect and his millions. Harley stood up, knocked out his pipe in an ash tray and reloaded it thoughtfully.
That inner prompting of his higher imagination spoke to him no more, but intellectually he was alert. These isolated incidents were rapidly leading up to some crowning event; and for this he must be prepared.
When he came down from the study to go to his room to change, for he had had little enough time before dinner, he discovered Wu Chang engaged in drawing the curtains before the French windows. He had not yet lighted up, however, and beyond the terrace Harley had a glimpse of an angry sky, although save for that distant rumble, the brewing storm, so far, had failed to proclaim itself.