“You know who he was?” Laverick inquired.
Again the waiter paused for a moment before he answered—paused and looked nervously around the room. His voice shook.
“He was the man as was murdered about a hundred yards off the ‘Black Post’ last night, sir,” he said.
“I got an hour off to-day,” the waiter continued, “and went down to the Mortuary. There was no doubt about it. There he was—same chap, same clothes. I could swear to him anywhere, and I reckon I’ll have to at the inquest.”
Laverick’s cigarette burned away between his fingers. It seemed to him that he was no longer in the room. He was listening to Big Ben striking the hour, he was back again in that tiny little bedroom with its spotless sheets and lace curtains. The man on the bed was looking at him. Laverick remembered the look and shivered.
“What has this to do with Morrison?” he demanded.
Once more the waiter looked around in that half mysterious, half terrified way.
“Mr. Morrison, sir,” he said, dropping his voice to a hoarse whisper, “he followed the other chap out within thirty seconds. A sort of queer look he’d got in his face too, and he went out without paying me. I’ve read the papers pretty careful, sir,” the man went on, “but I ain’t seen no word of that pocket-book of bank-notes being found on the man as was murdered.”
Laverick threw the end of his burning cigarette away. He walked to the window, keeping his back deliberately turned on his visitor. His eyes followed the glittering arc of lights which fringed the Thames Embankment, were caught by the flaring sky-sign on the other side of the river. He felt his heart beating with unaccustomed vigor. Was this, then, the secret of Morrison’s terror? He wondered no longer at his collapse. The terror was upon him, too. He felt his forehead, and his hand, when he drew it away, was wet. It was not Morrison alone but he himself who might be implicated in this man’s knowledge. The thoughts flitted through his brain like parts of a nightmare. He saw Morrison arrested, he saw the whole story of the missing pocket-book in the papers, he imagined his bank manager reading it and thinking of that parcel of mysterious bank-notes deposited in his keeping on the morning after the tragedy... Laverick was a strong man, and his moment of weakness, poignant though it had been, passed. This was no new thing with which he was confronted. All the time he had known that the probabilities were in favor of such a discovery. He set his teeth and turned to face his visitor.