Chapter XLI.
Who is The Crimson Circle?
Yale learnt no more details than those he had already read, and took a taxi to his city office, which he had not visited for two days.
The escape of Thalia Drummond was a much more important affair than Parr seemed to think. Parr! An awful thought occurred to Derrick Yale. John Parr! That stolid, stupid-looking man—it was impossible! He shook his head, yet put his mind resolutely to the task of piecing together every incident in which Inspector Parr had figured, and in the end:
“Impossible!” he muttered again, as he walked slowly up the stairs to his office, declining the invitation of the lift-boy.
The first thing he noticed when he unlocked the door was that the letter-box was empty. It was a very large letter-box, with a patent flap device, designed so that it was impossible for an outside pilferer to extract any of its contents. The wire cage reached almost to the floor, and letters that came through the slot in the door had to fall through revolving aluminium blades, which made the letter thief’s task a hopeless one. And the letter-box was empty! There was not so much as a tradesman’s circular.
He closed the door quietly and went into his own room. He took no more than a pace into the interior and then stopped. Every drawer in his desk was open. The little steel safe by the side of the fireplace, concealed from view by the wooden panelling, had been unlocked, and the door was now open. He looked under the desk. There was a tiny cupboard, which only an expert could have found, and here Derrick Yale had kept the more intimate documents connected with the Crimson Circle case.
He saw nothing but a broken panel and the mark of the chisel that had wrenched it free.
He sat for a long time in his chair, staring out of the window. There was no need to ask who was the artist. He could guess that. Nevertheless, he made a few perfunctory inquiries, and the lift boy supplied him with all the information he needed.
“Yes, sir, your secretary has been this morning, the pretty young lady. She came in soon after the offices were open. She was only here about an hour, and then she left.”
“Did she carry a bag?”
“Yes, sir. A little bag,” said the boy.
“Thank you,” said Derrick Yale, and went back to head-quarters, to pour into the phlegmatic Mr. Parr’s ear a tale of rifled desk and stolen documents.
“Now, I’m going to tell you, Parr, what I have told nobody else, not even the Commissioner,” said Yale. “We think of the Crimson Circle organisation as being run by a man. I happen to know that this girl has met the man who initiated her into the mysteries of the gang, whatever they are. But I also know that, so far from being the master, this mysterious gentleman in the motor-car, takes his orders, as everybody else does, from the real centre of the organisation—which is Thalia Drummond!”
“Good Lord!” said the inspector.
“You wonder why I had her in my office? I told you it was because I thought she would bring us closer to the Circle. And I was right.”
“But why dismiss her?” asked the other quickly.
“Because she had done something which merited dismissal,” said Yale, “and if I had not fired her then and there, she would have known that I was keeping her in my office with an object. I might have saved myself the trouble, apparently,” he smiled, “because this morning’s work proves that she knew what my game was.” His thin, delicate face darkened, and then he said almost sharply: “When you have told your story to-night to the Prime Minister and his friends, I have a little story to tell which I think will surprise you.”
“Nothing you can say will ever surprise me,” said Mr. Parr.
The third shock which Derrick Yale received that day came on his return home. The first half of his surprise was to find that his servant was out. The one woman he employed did not sleep on the premises, but she was supposed to remain in the flat until nine o’clock in the evening. It was exactly six when Derrick Yale came in to find the place in darkness.
He turned on the light and made a tour of the rooms. Apparently, the sitting-room was the only apartment which had been disturbed, but here, whoever the intruder had been and he could guess her name, she had been very thorough and painstaking. It was not necessary for him to seek out the servant and discover what had happened. She had been called away from the house by a message purporting to come from him—he guessed that much. And whilst she was away Thalia Drummond had examined the contents of the flat at her leisure.
“A clever young woman!” said Derrick without malice, for he could admire even the genius which was employed against himself. She had lost no time. Within twelve hours she had broken gaol, ransacked both his office and his flat, and had removed documents which had a vital bearing upon the Crimson Circle.
He dressed himself leisurely, wondering what would be her next move. Of his own he was certain. Within twenty-four hours Inspector Parr would be a broken man. From a drawer in his dressing-room he took a revolver, looked at it for a moment speculatively, and slipped it into his hip pocket. There was going to be a startling and a sensational end to the chase of the Crimson Circle, an end wholly unforeseen by the spectators of the tragic game.
In the wide lobby of the Prime Minister’s house he found a guest, the excuse for whose presence he could not fathom. Jack Beardmore had certainly been a sufferer from the activities of the Crimson Circle, but he had no part in the latter incidents.
“I suppose you are surprised to see me, Mr. Yale,” laughed Jack, as he took the other’s hand, “but you’re not more surprised than I am to be invited to a meeting of the Cabinet.”
He chuckled.
“Who invited you?—Parr?”
“To be exact, the Prime Minister’s secretary. But I think Parr must have had something to do with the invitation. Don’t you feel scared in this company?”
“Not very,” smiled Derrick, slapping the other on the back.
A youthful private secretary bustled in and ushered them into the severe drawing-room, where a dozen gentlemen were talking in two groups.
The Prime Minister came forward to meet the detective.
“Inspector Parr has not arrived.” He looked questioningly at Jack. “I presume this is Mr. Beardmore?” he said. “The inspector particularly asked that you should be present. I suppose he has some light to throw upon poor James Beardmore’s death—by the way, your father was a great friend of mine.”
The inspector came in at that moment. He wore a dress suit which had seen better days, a low collar with an awkwardly-tied bow, and he seemed an incongruous figure in that atmosphere of intellect and refinement. Following him came the grey-moustached Commissioner, who nodded curtly to his junior and led the Prime Minister aside.
The two were engaged in a whispered conversation for a little time, and then the colonel came across to where Yale was standing with Jack.
“Have you any idea what sort of a lecture Parr is going to give?” he said, a little impatiently. “I was quite under the impression that he was making a statement by invitation, but from what the Prime Minister tells me, it was Parr who suggested he should give the history of the Crimson Circle. I hope he isn’t going to make a fool of himself.”
“I don’t think he will, sir.” It was Jack’s quiet voice that had interrupted, and the Commissioner looked at him inquiringly until Yale introduced the young man.
“I agree with Mr. Beardmore,” said Derrick Yale. “I have not the slightest expectation of Mr. Parr making a fool of himself, in fact, I think he is going to fill up a number of gaps and bridge over seemingly irreconcilable circumstances, and I am ready to fill in a number of spaces which he may leave blank.”
The company seated itself, and the Prime Minister beckoned the inspector forward.
“If you don’t mind, sir, I’ll stay where I am,” he said. “I’m not an orator, and I should like to tell this yarn as if I were telling it to any one of you.”
He cleared his throat and began speaking. At first his words were hesitant and he paused again and again to find the right phrase, but as he warmed to his subject he spoke more quickly and lucidly.
“The Crimson Circle,” he began, “is a man named Lightman, a criminal who committed several murders in France, was condemned to death, but was saved by an accident from execution. His full name is Ferdinand Walter Lightman, and on the date of his attempted execution his age was twenty-three years and four months. He was transported to Cayenne, and escaped from that settlement after murdering a warder, and it is believed got away to Australia. A man answering his description, but giving another name, was working for a storekeeper in Melbourne for eighteen months, and was afterwards in the employment of a squatter named Macdonald for two years and five months. He left Australia in a hurry, a warrant having been issued against him by the local police for attempting to blackmail his employer.
“What happened to him subsequently we have not been able to trace until there appeared in England an unknown and mysterious blackmailer who signed himself the Crimson Circle, and who, by careful organisation and a display of remarkable patience and energy, gathered around him a large number of assistants, all of whom were unknown to one another. His modus operandi” (the inspector stumbled at the phrase) “was to find out somebody in a responsible position, who was either in need of money or in fear of prosecution for some offence which he or she had committed. He made the most careful inquiries before he approached his recruit, who was finally interviewed in a closed car driven by the Crimson Circle himself. Usually the rendezvous was one of the London squares which had the advantage of having four or five exits and a further advantage of being poorly lighted. You gentlemen are probably aware that the residential squares of London are the worst illuminated streets in the metropolis.
“Another class of recruit the Crimson Circle was very eager to secure was the convicted criminal. In this way he dragged in Sibly, an ex-sailor of a particularly low intelligence, who was already suspected of having committed murder, and who was the very man for the Crimson Circle’s purpose. In this way he secured Thalia Drummond——” he paused—“a thief, and an associate of thieves. In this way, too, he found the black man who murdered the railway director. For his own purpose he put in Brabazon the banker, and would have taken Felix Marl only, unfortunately for Marl, they had been associated together in the very crime for which Lightman nearly lost his life. More unfortunate still, Marl recognised Lightman when he met him in England, and this is the reason why Marl was eventually destroyed, the murderer employing perhaps the most ingenious method that has ever been used by a homicidal criminal.
“You can well understand, gentlemen,” he went on. They were following the little man with strained interest. “The Crimson Circle——”
“Why did he call himself Crimson Circle?” It was Derrick Yale who asked the question, and for a little while the inspector was silent.
“He called himself Crimson Circle,” he said slowly, “because it was a name he had amongst his fellow convicts. About his neck was a red birth-mark—and I’ll blow the top of your head off if you move!”
The heavy calibre Webley he held in his hand covered Derrick Yale.
“Put your hands right up!” said the inspector, and then suddenly he reached out his hand and tore away the high white collar which covered Yale’s neck.
There was a gasp. Red, blood-red, as though it were painted by human agency, a circle of crimson ran about the throat of Derrick Yale.
Chapter XLII.
Mother
In the room three men had mysteriously appeared—the three who had captured Parr’s spy two nights before—and in a second Yale was manacled hand and foot. A deft hand jerked the pistol that he carried from his pocket, a third man dropped a cloth bag over his head and face, and he was hurried from the room.
Inspector Parr wiped the perspiration from his streaming forehead, and faced his amazed audience.
“Gentlemen,” he said a little shakily, “if you will excuse me for to-night I will tell you the whole of this story to-morrow.”
They surrounded him, plying him with questions, but he could only shake his head.
“He’s had a very bad time,” it was the colonel’s voice, “and nobody knows it better than I. I should be very glad, Prime Minister, if you could accede to the inspector’s request, and allow the further explanation to stand over until to-morrow.”
“Perhaps the inspector will lunch with us,” said the Premier, and his Commissioner accepted on Parr’s behalf.
Gripping Jack’s arm Parr marched from the room and into the street. A taxi-cab was awaiting him and he bundled the young man in.
“I feel that I’ve been dreaming,” said Jack when he had found his voice. “Derrick Yale! Impossible! And yet——”
“Oh, it is possible all right,” said the inspector with a little laugh.
“Then he and Thalia Drummond were working together?”
“Exactly,” was the reply.
“But, inspector, how did you get on to this story?”
“Mother put me on to it,” was the unexpected answer. “You don’t realise what a clever old lady mother is. She told me to-night——”
“Then she’s come back?”
“Yes, she’s come back,” said the inspector. “I want you to meet her. She’s a bit dogmatic, and she is inclined to argue, but I always let her have her way in that respect.”
“And you may be sure I shall, too,” laughed Jack, though he did not feel like laughing. “You really believe that the Crimson Circle is in your hands?”
“I am sure of it,” said the inspector. “As sure as I’m sitting in this taxi-cab with you, and as sure as I am that grandmother is the wisest old lady in the world.”
Jack maintained a silence until they were turning into the avenue.
“Then this means that Thalia is dragged a little lower?” he said quietly. “If this man Yale is, as you believe, the Crimson Circle, he will not spare her.”
“I’m certain of that,” said the inspector; “but, lord bless you, Mr. Beardmore, why trouble your head about Thalia Drummond?”
“Because I love her, you damned fool!” said Jack savagely, and instantly apologised.
“I know I’m a bit of a fool,” the inspector spoke, between gusts of laughter, “but I’m not the only one in London, Mr. Beardmore, believe me. And if you’ll take my advice you’ll forget that Thalia Drummond ever existed. And if you’ve got any love to spare, why, give it to mother!”
Jack was about to say something uncomplimentary about this paragon of a grandmother, but suppressed his desire.
The inspector’s maisonette was on the first floor, and he went up the stairs ahead, opened the door and stood for a moment in the doorway.
“Hello, mother,” he said. “I’ve brought Mr. Jack Beardmore to see you.”
Jack heard an exclamation.
“Come in, Mr. Beardmore, come in and meet mother.”
Jack stepped into the room and stood as if he had been shot. Facing him was a smiling girl, a little pale and a little tired looking, but undoubtedly, unless he were mad or dreaming, Thalia Drummond!
She took his outstretched hand in hers and led him to the table, where a meal for three was laid.
“Daddy, you told me you were going to bring the Commissioner,” she said reproachfully.
“Daddy?” stammered Jack. “But you told me she was your grandmother.”
She patted his hand.
“Daddy has developed a sense of humour, which is very distressing,” she said. “I’m always called ‘mother’ at home, because I’ve mothered him ever since my own dear mother died. And that story about his grandmother is nonsense, but you must forgive him.”
“Your father?” said Jack.
Thalia nodded.
“Thalia Drummond Parr, that is my name. Thank goodness, you aren’t a crime investigator, or you would have made inquiries and discovered my ghastly secret. Now eat your supper, Mr. Beardmore; I cooked it myself.”
But Jack could neither eat nor drink until he had learnt more, and she proceeded to enlighten him.
“When the first of the Crimson Circle murders occurred and daddy was put into the case, I knew that he had a tremendous work in front of him and that the chances were he would fail. Daddy has a lot of enemies at head-quarters, and our Commissioner asked him not to take the case, knowing how difficult it was going to be. You see, the Commissioner is my godfather,” she added smilingly, “and naturally he takes an interest in our affairs. But daddy insisted, though I think he regretted it the moment he had taken it on. I have always been interested in police work, and just as soon as father got behind the Crimson Circle organisation and knew the methods that the Circle employed to gather its recruits, I decided to start upon a career of crime.
“Your father received the first threat three months before it was put into execution. It was two or three days afterwards that I secured a post as secretary to Harvey Froyant, for no other reason than that his estate adjoined yours. He was a friend of your father, and it gave me an opportunity of watching. I tried to get employment with your father. Perhaps you don’t know that,” she said quietly, “but I failed. Even more dreadful, I was in the wood when he was killed.” She squeezed his hand sympathetically. “I didn’t see who it was who fired the shot, but I flew forward to where your father was lying, only to discover that he was beyond help, and then, seeing you through the trees running across the meadows toward the wood, I thought I had better get away. The more so,” she added, “since I had a revolver in my hand at the time, for I had seen a man stalking in the wood and I had gone in to investigate.
“With the death of your father there was no longer any need for me to remain in the service of Mr. Froyant. I wanted to get closer to the Crimson Circle, and I knew the best way to attract the attention of the man who controlled the gang was for me to embark on a criminal career. It was not providential that you were passing the pawnshop when I came out after pledging Mr. Froyant’s golden image. My father manœuvred that, and when he described me as a thief and an associate of crooks, it was to create an atmosphere, which would impress Derrick Yale, or Ferdinand Walter Lightman, to give him his real name. There was no danger of my being sent to prison. The magistrate treated me as a first offender, but my reputation was gone, and immediately after, as I expected, I received a summons to meet the head of the Crimson Circle.
“I met him one night in Steyne Square. I think daddy was watching me all the time and shadowed me back to the house. He was never far away, were you, darling?”
“Only at Barnet,” he shook his head. “I was scared there, mother.”
“My first task as a member of the Crimson Circle was to go to Brabazon. You see, Yale’s method was to set one member to spy upon another. Mr. Brabazon puzzled me. I was never quite sure whether he was straight or crooked, and of course I had no idea at first that he was a member of the gang. I had to begin stealing again in order to sustain my character. It brought down on me a reprimand from my mysterious chief, but it served a useful purpose, for it brought me into contact with a gang of crooks and led unconsciously to my being present in Marisburg Place when Felix Marl also died.
“Yale’s object in employing me was to divert suspicion from himself. Besides which, he had intended a very pretty ending to my youthful life. The night he killed Froyant I was ordered to be in the vicinity of the house with a similar knife and the fellow gauntlet to that which Yale used himself in his dreadful crime.”
“But how did you escape from prison?” asked Jack.
She looked at him with amusement in her eyes.
“You dear boy,” she said, “how could I escape from prison? I was let out by the governor in the middle of the night and escorted to my home by a respectable inspector of police!”
“We wanted to force Yale’s hand, you see,” explained Parr. “As soon as he knew that mother was out he got rattled and began to hurry his preparations for flight. When he found that his office had been burgled he was pretty sure that Thalia was something more than he had dreamt she was.”
Chapter XLIII.
The Story Continued
Jack went to the luncheon party the next day and so, too, did Thalia, who had played such a part, and was the public heroine of the hour. After lunch the inspector completed his story.
“If you take your minds back, gentlemen, you will remember that the name of Derrick Yale had never been heard until the first of the Crimson Circle murders. It is true that he had established himself in a city office, that he had issued circulars, had put advertisements in the paper describing himself as a psychometric detective, but the cases which came to him were very few. Of course, he did not want any cases. He was working up to his big coup. It was after the first murder, you remember, that Derrick Yale was employed by a newspaper, which wanted a good sensational story, to employ his psychometric powers in the tracking of the criminal.
“Who knew better than Yale the name of the murderer and how the murder was committed? You remember that he was able to reconstruct the crime by feeling the weapon with which it was committed. And, in consequence, a black man was arrested, in exactly the spot where Derrick Yale said he would be. Naturally when these facts were disclosed Yale’s reputation rose sky-high. It was the very situation that he expected. He knew now that a man threatened by the Crimson Circle would be inclined to call in his assistance, and that is just what happened.
“By being near his victims and gaining their confidence—for Yale was a most convincing type of man—he was able to urge them to pay the demands of the Crimson Circle, and if they refused he was on hand to encompass their death.
“Froyant might not have died, and certainly would not have died at Yale’s hands, but for the fact that, annoyed by losing so much money, he made inquiries himself. Starting on a hypothesis which was based upon the faintest suspicion, he worked up the case against Derrick Yale, and was able to identify Lightman and Derrick Yale as one and the same person. On the night of his death he sent for us, intending to make this disclosure, and as a proof that he was in some fear he had two loaded revolvers by his hand, and it is well known that Froyant disliked intensely the employment of firearms.
“And you will remember, if you have read the official minutes of the case, the Commissioner rang up Froyant in response to a call which Harvey Froyant had put through. That call gave Yale his opportunity. It was an excuse for Froyant sending us out of the room. I went first, never dreaming that he would dare do what he did. When we went into the room we wore our overcoats, and I particularly noticed that Derrick Yale kept his hand in his pocket. On the hand, gentlemen,” he said impressively, “was a motor-driver’s gauntlet, and in that hand was the knife that slew Froyant.”
“But why did he wear the glove?” asked the Prime Minister.
“In order that his hand, which I should see immediately afterwards, should not be bloodstained. The moment my back was turned, he lunged straight at Froyant’s heart, and Froyant must have died instantly. He slipped off the glove and left it on the table, walked to the door, and seemed to be carrying on a conversation with a man who was already dead.
“I knew this had happened, but I had no proof. He had brought my daughter there, intending to get her into the house, which we immediately searched, with the intention of accusing her of the crime. But she very wisely went no farther than to the back of the house and then, suspecting his plot, went home. But I am anticipating. Amongst the people whom we had to guard was James Beardmore, and James Beardmore was a land speculator, a man who knew all kinds of people, good and bad. That day he was expecting a visit from Marl, whom he had never seen, and he mentioned Marl’s name earlier in the day to his son, but not to Derrick Yale. As Marl came toward the house the last person in the world he expected to see was his fellow criminal of Toulouse Gaol, a man whom he had betrayed to his death.
“Derrick Yale must have been standing at the end of the shrubbery, and Marl caught a momentary glimpse of him and went back to the village, ostensibly to London, in a panic of fright, determined, in his fear, that he would kill Lightman before Lightman killed him. His courage must have oozed. He was not a particularly brave man, and instead he wrote a letter to Yale, pushing it under his window—a letter which Yale read and partially burnt. What the letter was I cannot tell you, except it was probably a statement that if he, Marl, was left alone, he would leave Yale alone. He could not have known in what capacity Mr. Derrick Yale was posing. The words ‘Block B’ undoubtedly referred to the Block at Toulouse Prison.
“From that moment Marl was a doomed man. He was conducting a little blackmail of his own with Brabazon, an agent of the Crimson Circle, and Brabazon must have intimated the danger to Yale who, in his capacity as detective, visited the shop to which all the Crimson Circle letters were addressed, and on the pretext of aiding justice opened them of course and saw their contents, without having the responsibility of being the person to whom they were addressed.
“It was Brabazon’s intention to bolt on the day following Marl’s murder, and with that object he had cleared out the whole of Marl’s balance and had made preparations for flight. On Marl’s death suspicion naturally fell upon him and, intimated by the Crimson Circle that he was in danger, he hurried off to the riverside house which we searched.”
Detective-Inspector Parr chuckled.
“When I say ‘we searched it,’ I mean Yale searched it. In other words, he went into the room where he knew Brabazon was, and came down reporting that all was clear.”
“There is one point I’d like you to clear up—the chloroforming of Yale in his office,” said the Prime Minister.
“That was clever, and deceived me for a moment. Yale handcuffed, strapped and chloroformed himself after he had put the money in an envelope and dropped it down the letter-chute—it was addressed to his private residence. Do you remember, sir, that the postman left the building, having cleared the box, a few minutes after the ‘outrage’? Unfortunately for Yale, I had let Thalia into the room and put her into the cupboard, where she witnessed the whole comedy and retrieved the chloroform bottle which he had put into a drawer of his desk.”
“The last victim, Mr. Raphael Willings,” here Parr spoke very clearly and deliberately, “owes his life to the fact that he conceived an unhealthy attachment for my daughter. She was struggling with him, when, looking over her shoulder, she saw a hand come from behind the curtain holding the very knife that had been stolen earlier in the day by Yale (again in his capacity as detective). It was aimed at Mr. Willings’s heart, but by a superhuman effort, she thrust him aside, but not so far as to save him completely. Yale, of course, was on hand to discover the outrage (I should imagine he was very annoyed when he found it was not a murder), and of course he had no difficulty in fixing it upon mother—upon Thalia Drummond Parr.
“Consider the cleverness of his operations!” said Parr admiringly. “He had thrust himself into the front rank of private detectives, so that he was on hand to receive information which was invaluable to him as the Crimson Circle. He was eventually taken to police head-quarters—at my suggestion—where the most important documents came under his notice. Some of them were not quite as important as he thought, but it saved Mr. Beardmore’s life when Yale had the first handling of a photograph of himself taken a few moments before the abortive execution.
“Now, gentlemen, are there any other points that you wish cleared up? There is one I will clear up which is probably not obscure. Two days ago I told Yale that great criminals are usually brought to their end through ridiculous mistakes. Yale had the effrontery to tell me that he had called at Mr. Willings’s house after he had left and that the servants had told him where Thalia and Willings had gone. That alone was sufficient to damn him, because he had not been near Willings’s house since the morning, and had arrived at the country place at least an hour before the servants had come.”
“The question that disturbs me for the moment,” said the Prime Minister, “is what reward we can give to your daughter, Mr. Parr? Your promotion is of course an easy matter to arrange, for there is an assistant-commissionership vacant at this moment; but I don’t exactly see what we can do for Miss Drummond, except of course to give her the monetary reward which is due for having brought about the capture of this dangerous criminal.”
Then a husky voice spoke. It sounded to Jack as though it were his, and the rest of the people about the table seemed to be under the same impression.
“There is no need to bother about Miss Parr,” said this strange voice, that was speaking Jack’s thoughts, “we are getting married very soon.”
When the buzz of congratulation had subsided, Inspector Parr leant toward his daughter.
“You didn’t tell me, mother,” he said reproachfully.
“I didn’t even tell him,” she said, looking at Jack wonderingly.
“Do you mean to say he hasn’t asked you to marry him?” demanded her amazed father.
She shook her head.
“No,” she said, “and I haven’t told him I would marry him either, but I had a feeling that something like this would happen.”
* * * * *
Lightman, or Yale, as he was best known, was an exemplary prisoner. His only complaint against the authorities was that they would not let him smoke on his way to his execution.
“They order these things much better in France,” he said to the governor. “Now, the last time I was executed——”
To the chaplain he expressed the warmest interest in Thalia Drummond.
“There is a girl in a million!” he said. “I suppose she will marry young Beardmore—he is a very lucky fellow. Personally, women arouse very little enthusiasm in me, and I ascribe my success in life to this fact. But if I were a marrying man, I think Thalia Drummond would be the very type I should search for.”
He liked the chaplain because the padre was a big human man who could talk interestingly on places and things and people, and Derrick Yale had seen most of the fascinating places in the world.
On a grey March morning a man came into his cell and strapped his hands.
Yale looked at him over his shoulder.
“Have you ever heard of M. Pallion? He was a member of your profession.”
The executioner did not reply, being by etiquette forbidden to discuss other matters than the prisoner’s forgiveness for the deed which was about to be committed.
“You should find out something about Pallion,” said Yale, as the procession formed, “and profit by his example. Never drink. Drink was my ruin! If it were not for drink I should not be here!”
This little conceit kept him amused all the way to the scaffold. They slipped the noose about his neck and covered his face with a white cloth, and then the executioner stepped back to the steel lever.
“I hope this rope won’t break,” said Derrick Yale.
It was the last message from the Crimson Circle.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. court-house/court house, fireplace/fire-place, jailor/jailer, etc.) have been preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Fix a couple quotation mark pairings.
[Chapter I]
Change “The dèbris of the dead autumn whirled in fantastic circles” to débris.
[Chapter III]
(in her even tone. “something which you haven’t realised.) to Something.
[Chapter IX]
(“Mr Beardmore,” she said in a low voice, “you are just being) to Mr.
[Chapter XXXI]
(“Good morning, Miss Drummond,”) change the second comma to a period.
[Chapter XXXII]
“which was found afterwards to contain the poison,” change comma to a period.
[Chapter XXXV]
“and realising the absurdity of his protest, laughed,” change the second comma to a period.
[Chapter XLIII]
(as the procession formed. “and profit by his example.) change the first period to a comma.
“Never drink, Drink was my ruin! If it were not for drink” change the first comma to a period.
[End of text]