I had time to voice my surprise at seeing the familiar post-mark, Cherry had turned back the torn flap of the envelope and we both saw that it was empty. He thrust it into my hand with an exclamation of disappointment.
“Blank!” he muttered. “Nothing there! But still—the postmark! That’s Middlebourne, right enough. And the handwriting—do you recognise it, Ben?”
“No!” I answered promptly. “I don’t know it. But Nellie Apps and her mother, who keep the post office, might. Though there are two or three hundred people in Middlebourne, you know!”
“Aye!—and this mayn’t have been written by any one of ’em, but by a stranger, there for the time being,” he said. “All the same, here’s the cover of a letter posted from Middlebourne to Mr. Joseph Krevin on a precise date—and that date, Ben, as you’ll observe, was three days before Joseph Krevin turned up at your house! Very good—we must find out who sent that letter. It’s not a common-place style of writing, either.”
He put the envelope in his pocket, and began to look round. But there was little to see—so I thought. Uncle Joseph appeared to have few belongings. There was a goodly stock of clothes, linen, and the like in the drawers which Cherry opened and glanced into; there were a few books on a shelf, some old pipes and a cigar box or two on the mantelpiece, and a pile of papers and magazines on a side-table. But no private papers or letter lay about, and though there was a rickety writing-desk in one corner of the room there was nothing in or on it that gave us any indication of Uncle Joseph’s doings or pursuits, other than a few more business cards of Mr. Crippe and a price-list bearing the name of Zetterquist & Vanderpant. On a shelf above it, however, stood some carved figures and ornaments, and Cherry pointed to them with a significant glance.
“I don’t think there’s much doubt that your mysterious relative has been in the East during those years in which his family never heard of him, Ben,” he remarked. “Look at those things!—mementoes of his travels, I imagine. Indian ware, I believe—oh, yes, I think Uncle Joseph has smelled the East. And no doubt picked up some Eastern notions as to how things should be done!”
The pile of papers and magazines lay just by his hand, and he began to turn it over, apparently without aim. But suddenly he pulled out an illustrated journal with a coloured cover and held it towards me with a laugh.
“This is like the children’s game where you get hot or get cold in searching for something, Ben!” he said. “We’re getting hot! See this—the Lady’s Circle! And the very same issue as that in which the interview with Miss Ellingham appears! And—ho-ho!—look here, my boy!—what do you think of that?”
He spread the paper out before me, pointing triumphantly, and I saw at once what he meant. The page on which the photographs of Miss Ellingham’s drawing-room and of the Kang-he vase appeared had been torn out!
We looked at each other with a common instinct. And Cherry began to fold up the mutilated journal, preparatory to putting it in his pocket.
“Yes, that’s it, Ben, my boy!” he said, as if assenting to some proposition which I had just put into words, though as a matter of fact, I hadn’t spoken. “You’re right! Your Uncle Joseph has had some share in the theft of that Kang-he vase! We’re on the track, Ben! And we’ve done a very good afternoon’s work, and now we’ll knock off and go to my little flat, which isn’t very far away, and when we’ve had a wash and a tidy-up we’ll get a bit of dinner and go to a theatre or a music-hall—whichever and wherever you like! Oh, yes!—I think I’m beginning to see through the brick wall, Ben!”