"He's dead now," said Allerdyke. "He's lying there dead. Come in!"
The door along the corridor from which the man of the shock head and great beard had looked out, opened again, and the big head was protruded. Its owner, seeing the two standing there, came out.
"Anything wrong?" he asked, advancing towards them in his pyjamas. "If there's any illness, I'm a medical man. Can I be of use?"
Allerdyke turned sharply, looking the stranger well over. He was not sure whether the man was an Englishman or a foreigner; he fancied that he detected a slightly foreign accent. The tone was well-meaning, and even kindly.
"I'm obliged to you," replied Allerdyke, in his characteristically blunt fashion. "I'm afraid nobody can be of use. The truth is, I came to join my cousin here, and I find him dead. Seems to me he's been dead some time. As you're a doctor, you can tell, of course. Perhaps you'll come in?"
He led the way back into the bedroom, the other two following closely behind him. At sight of the dead man the bearded stranger uttered a sharp exclamation.
"Ah!" he said. "Mr. Allerdyke!"
"You knew him, then?" demanded Marshall. "You've met him?"
The other, who had stooped over the body, bestowing a light touch on face and hand, looked up and nodded.
"I came over with him from Christiania," he answered. "I met him thereat a hotel. I had several conversations with him. In fact, I warned him."
"Warned him? Of what!" asked Allerdyke.
"Over-exertion," replied the doctor quietly. "I saw symptoms of heart-strain. That was why I talked with him. I gathered from what he told me that he was a man who lived a very strenuous life, and I warned him against doing too much. He was not fitted for it."
"Good Lord!" exclaimed Allerdyke, with obvious impatience. "Why, I always considered him as one of the fittest men I ever knew!"
"Perhaps you did," said the doctor. "Laymen, sir, do not see what a trained eye sees. The proof in his case isthere!"
He pointed to the dead man, at whom the night-porter was staring with astonished eyes.
Allerdyke stared, too, or seemed to stare. In reality, he was gazing into space, wondering about what had just been said.
"Then you think he died a natural death?" he asked, suddenly turning on his companion. "You don't think there'sanything wrong?"
The doctor shook his head calmly.
"I think he died of precisely what I should have expected him to die of," he answered. "Heart failure. It came upon him quite suddenly. You see, he was in the act of taking off his boots. He is a little fleshystout. The exertion of bending over and downthat was too much. He felt a sharp spasmhe sat backhe died, there and then."
"There and then!" repeated Allerdyke mechanically. "Wellwhat's to be done!" he went on. "What is done in these casesI suppose you know?"
"There will have to be an inquest later on," answered the doctor. "I can give evidence for you, if you likeI am staying in Hull for a few daysfor I can certainly testify to what I had observed. But that comes laterat present you had better acquaint the manager of the hotel, and I should suggest sending for a local medical manthere are some eminent men of my profession in this town. Andthe body should be laid out. I'll go and dress, and then do what I can for you."
"Much obliged," responded Allerdyke. "Very kind of you. What name, sir?"
"My name is Lydenberg," replied the stranger. "I will give you my card presently. I have the honour of addressing?"
Allerdyke pulled out his own card-case.
"My name's Marshall Allerdyke," he answered. "I'm his cousin," he went on, with another glance at the still figure. "And, my conscience, I never thought to find him like this! I never heard of any weakness on his partI always thought him a particularly strong man."
"You will send for another medical man?" asked Dr. Lydenberg. "It will be more satisfactory to you."
"Yes, I'll see to that," replied Allerdyke. He turned to look at the night-porter, who was still hanging about as if fascinated. "Look here!" he said. "We don't want any fuss. Just rouse the manager quietly, and ask him to come here. And find that chauffeur of mine, and tell him I want him. Now, then, what about a doctor? Do you know a real, first-class one?"
"There's several within ten minutes, sir," answered the night-porter. "There's Dr. Orwin, in Coltman Streethe's generally fetched here. I can get a man to go for him at once."
"Do!" commanded Allerdyke. "But send me my driver firstI want him. Tell him what's happened."
He waited, standing and staring at his dead cousin until Gaffney came hurrying along the corridor. Allerdyke beckoned him into the room and closed the door.
"Gaffney," he said. "You see how things are? Mr. James is deadI found him sitting there, dead. He's been dead some timehours. There's a doctor, a foreigner, I think, across the passage there, who says it's been heart failure. I've sent for another doctor. Now in the meantime, I want to see what my cousin's got on him, and I want you to help me. We'll take everything off him in the way of valuables, papers, and so on, and put 'em in that small hand-bag of his."
Master and man went methodically to work; and an observer of an unduly sentimental shade of mind might have said that there was something almost callous about their measured, business-like proceedings. But Marshall Allerdyke was a man of eminently thorough and practical habits, and he was doing what he did with an idea and a purpose. His cousin might have died from sudden heart failure; again, he might not, there might have been foul play; there might have been one of many reasons for his unexpected deathanyway, in Allerdyke's opinion it was necessary for him to know exactly what James was carrying about his person when death took place. There was a small hand-bag on the dressing-table; Allerdyke opened it and took out all its contents. They were fewa muffler, a travelling-cap, a book or two, some foreign newspapers, a Russian word-book, a flask, the various odds and ends, small unimportant things which a voyager by sea and land picks up. Allerdyke took all these out, and laying them aside on the table, directed Gaffney to take everything from the dead man's pockets. And Gaffney, solemn of face and tight of lip, set to his task in silence.
There was comparatively little to bring to light. A watch and chainthe small pocket articles which every man carrieskeys, a monocle eyeglass, a purse full of gold, loose silver, a note-case containing a considerable sum in bank-notes, some English, some foreign, letters and papers, a pocket diarythese were all. Allerdyke took each as Gaffney produced them, and placed each in the bag with no more than a mere glance.
"Everything there is, sir," whispered the chauffeur at last. "I've been through every pocket."
Allerdyke found the key of the bag, locked it, and set it aside on the mantelpiece. Then he went over to the suit-case lying on the bench at the foot of the bed, closed and locked it, and dropped the bunch of keys in his pocket. And just then Dr. Lydenberg came back, dressed, and on his heels came the manager of the hotel, startled and anxious, and with him an elderly professional-looking man whom he introduced as Dr. Orwin.
When James Allerdyke's dead body had been lifted on to the bed, and the two medical men had begun a whispered conversation beside it, Allerdyke drew the hotel manager aside to a corner of the room.
"Did you see anything of my cousin when he arrived last night?" he asked.
"Not when he arrivedno," replied the manager. "But lateryes. I had some slight conversation with him after he had taken supper. It was nothing muchhe merely wished to know if there was always a night-porter on duty. He said he expected a friend, who might turn up at any hour of the night, and he wanted to leave a card for him. That would be you, I suppose, sir?"
"Just so," replied Allerdyke. "Now, how did he seem at that time? And what time was that?"
"Ten o'clock," said the manager. "Seem? Well, sir, he seemed to be in the very best of health and spirits! I was astonished to hear that he was dead. I never saw a man look more like living. He was"
The elderly doctor came away from the bed approaching Allerdyke.
"After hearing what Dr. Lydenberg tells me, and examining the bodya mere perfunctory examination as yet, you knowI have little doubt that this gentleman died of what is commonly called heart failure," he said. "There will have to be an inquest, of course, and it may be advisable to make a post-mortem examination. You are a relative?"
"Cousin," replied Allerdyke. He hesitated a moment, and then spoke bluntly. "You don't think it's been a case of poisoning, do you?" he said.
Dr. Orwin pursed his lips and regarded his questioner narrowly.
"Self-administered, do you mean?" he asked.
"Administered any way," answered Allerdyke. "Self or otherwise." He squared his shoulders and spoke determinedly. "I don't understand about this heart-failure notion," he went on. "I never heard him complain of his heart. He was a strong, active manhearty and full of go. I want to knoweverything."
"There should certainly be an autopsy," murmured Dr. Orwin. He turned and looked at his temporary colleague, who nodded as if in assent. Then he turned back to Allerdyke. "If you'll leave us for a while, we will just make a further examinationthen we'll speak to you later."
Allerdyke signified his assent with a curt nod of the head. Accompanied by the manager and Gaffney he left the room, and with him he carried the small hand-bag in which he had placed the dead man's personal effects.
CHAPTER III
THE SHOE BUCKLE
Once outside the death-chamber, Allerdyke asked the manager to give him a bedroom with a sitting-room attached to it, and to put Gaffney in another room close byhe should be obliged, he said, to stay at the hotel until the inquest was over and arrangements had been made for his cousin's funeral. The manager at once took him to a suite of three rooms at the end of the corridor which they were then in. Allerdyke took it at once, sent Gaffney down to bring up certain things from the car, and detained the manager for a moment's conversation.
"I suppose you'd a fair lot of people come in last night from that Christiania boat?" he asked.
"Some fifteen or twenty," answered the manager.
"Did you happen to see my cousin in conversation with any of them?" inquired Allerdyke.
The manager shrugged his shoulders. He was not definitely sure about that; he had a notion that he had seen Mr. James Allerdyke talking with some of the Perisco passengers, but the notion was vague.
"You know how it is," he went on. "People come inthey stand about talking in the hallgroups, you knowthey go from one to another. I think I saw him talking to that doctor who's in there now with Dr. Orwinthe man with the big beardand to a lady who came at the same time. There were several ladies in the partythe passengers were all about in the hall, and in the coffee-room, and so on. There are a lot of other people in the house, too, of course."
"It's this way," said Allerdyke. "I'm not at all satisfied about what these doctors say, so far. They may be right, of courseprobably are. Still I want to know all I can, and, naturally, I'd like to know who the people were that my cousin was last in company with. You never know what may have happenedthere's often something that doesn't show at first."
"There wasnothing missing in his room, I hope?" asked the manager with professional anxiety.
"Nothing that I know of," answered Allerdyke. "My man and I have searched him, and taken possession of everythingall that he had on him is in that bag, and I'm going to examine it now. NoI don't think anything had been taken from him, judging by what I've seen."
"You wouldn't like me to send for the police?" suggested the manager.
"Not at present," replied Allerdyke. "Not, at any rate, until these doctors say something more definitethey'll know more presently, no doubt. Of course, you've a list of all the people who came in last night?"
"They would all register," answered the manager. "But then, you know, sir, many of them will be going this morningmost of them are only breaking their journey. You can look over the register whenever you like."
"Later on," said Allerdyke. "In the meantime, I'll examine these things.
Send me up some coffee as soon as your people are stirring."
He unlocked the hand-bag when the manager had left him. It seemed to his practical and methodical mind that his first duty was to make himself thoroughly acquainted with the various personal effects which he and Gaffney had found on the dead man. Of the valuables he took little notice; it was very evident, in his opinion, that if James Allerdyke's death had been brought about by some sort of foul playa suspicion which had instantly crossed his mind as soon as he discovered that his cousin was deadthe object of his destroyer had not been robbery. James had always been accustomed to carrying a considerable sum of money on him; Gaffney's search had brought a considerable sum to light. James also wore a very valuable watch and chain and two fine diamond rings; there they all were. Not robberyno; at least, not robbery of the ordinary sort. Buthad there been robbery of another, a bigger, a subtle, and deep-designed sort? James was a man of many affairs and schemeshe might have had valuable securities, papers relating to designs, papers containing secrets of great moment; he was interested, for example, in several patentshe might have had documents pertinent to some affair of such importance that ill-disposed folk, eager to seize them, might have murdered him in order to gain possession of them. There were many possibilities, and there was alwaysto Allerdyke's mindthe improbability that James had died through sudden illness.
Now that Marshall Allerdyke's mind was clearing, getting free of the first effects of the sudden shock of finding his cousin dead, doubt and uneasiness as to the whole episode were rising strongly within him. He and James had been brought up together; they had never been apart from each other for more than a few months at a time during thirty-five years, and he flattered himself that he knew James as well as any man of James's acquaintance. He could not remember that his cousin had ever made any complaint of illness or indisposition; he had certainly never had any serious sickness in his life. As to heart trouble, Allerdyke knew that a few years previous to his death, James had taken out a life-policy with a first-rate office, and had been passed as a first-class life: he remembered, as he sat there thinking over these things, the self-satisfied grin with which James had come and told him that the examining doctor had declared him to be as sound as a bell. It was true, of course, that disease might have set in after thatstill, it was only six weeks since he had seen James and James was then looking in a fit, healthy, hearty state. He had gone off on one of his Russian journeys as full of life and spirits as a man could beand had not the hotel manager just said that he seemed full of health, full of go, at ten o'clock last night? And yet, within a couple of hours or soaccording to what the medical men thought from their hurried examinationthis active vigorous man was deadswiftly and mysteriously dead.
Allerdyke feltfelt intenselythat there was something deeply strange in all this, and yet it was beyond him, with his limited knowledge, to account for James's sudden death, except on the hypothesis suggested by the two doctors. All sorts of vague, half-formed thoughts were in his mind. Was there any person who desired James's death? Had any one tracked him to this placegot rid of him by some subtle means? Had