“Of course you have sent out a general alarm,” I asked Smithers a minute later.
He nodded.
“Of course, sir. Any one-legged man seen hereabouts will find his way to the police station.”
Then we began a careful consideration of the crime, each man suggesting that which he thought might help toward clearing it up and bringing the criminal to justice.
In this consultation, I conceived a great admiration for Captain Wonderly. The man had an exceedingly keen mind. In competition with Smithers and Inspector Grant, both old hands in the pursuit of criminals, he showed up wonderfully. No point escaped him and several times he set the others right in the development of a theory or in the statement of facts. Then and there, I said to myself, that could I persuade Wonderly to give up his time to seeking the murderer of my friend, I might hope for some results.
I was about to put the suggestion to him when we were all startled by the sound of quick footsteps on the stairs and along the hall. An instant later the library door swung wide and the huge bulk of Fellows filled the aperture.
I caught my breath in amazement as I saw the expression on his face. His eyes were wild with excitement and about his lips were lines of grim determination.
Without a word to the detectives or me, he crossed the room to Wonderly and bending over him whispered in his right ear.
A look of utter amazement came into Wonderly’s eyes. This was quickly followed by fear which in turn changed to a sort of blind rage. He strove to rise, but Fellows’s hand was about his throat and held him tightly to his chair.
Then very slowly, Fellows brought his other hand from behind his back. In it was a long knife and some queer contrivance whose purpose I could not make out. He threw these things on the table in front of Wonderly.
“Smithers,” he said in a cold, hard voice, “I want you to arrest this man for the murder of John Elder, Sir Roger Bascom, Professor Belding and Dr. Parkington.”
III
What happened then happened so quickly that we others had not the time to pull ourselves together and go to Fellows’s aid. There was a brief struggle between Fellows and Wonderly, a cry from the latter, the tinkle of broken glass on the floor and then suddenly Wonderly’s body went limp in Fellows’s hands.
“Poison,” Fellows muttered, bending over the body of his late antagonist. “The beggar had it in the pocket of his dressing-gown.”
He picked up a rug from the floor and threw it over the body in front of him.
Now we all crowded around Fellows and burst into a babel of questions. He raised one hand to silence us and with the other pointed at the queer contrivance which with the knife lay in front of Wonderly’s corpse.
“There,” he said, “is the wooden leg of your Peg-Leg.”
The thing was a piece of board cut in the shape of the sole of a shoe. From the bottom projected a short, round stick tipped with an iron ferrule. At the front and back were straps by which it might be fastened to a man’s foot. Only a brief examination of it was needed to see how once so fastened the prints the wearer would leave behind him would certainly resemble those of a one-legged man.
Smithers was the first to break the silence.
“Mr. Fellows,” he said, “I must congratulate you. You have laid by the heels a man whom the best detectives in England couldn’t catch. But I beg of you, sir, tell us how you did it.”
Fellows sank into a chair.
“All right,” he said, “it must be sometime and I suppose it might as well be now.”
He drew a square, leather-bound book from his pocket.
“But first,” he went on, “I want you to listen to a few extracts from Wonderly’s diary. They will throw some light on the man’s motives for his dastardly crimes.”
Then in a low voice he read us the following:
Calcutta, November 16 — Civilization again! After five years of freedom to be cooped up in this place of narrow streets and silly houses! But if it is my destiny to carry on the war among men of my own race, I must not begin by complaining.
I see none but strange faces on the streets and in the clubs. Thanks to the gods, the men who knew me have gone their ways. The fools! They despised me because my eyes sought the Light. And when, having found it, I followed it, they said that I had gone fantee.
How I could laugh at them now. The pretentious asses with their weak, anæmic gods, thinking they know the secrets of life. I who have stood before the altar of Siva and watched the spilling of the blood; I who have harkened to the angry voice of Kali, would bid them halt and reconsider their conceit lest the vengeance that is Asia’s descend upon them.
London — The message came today, and it is to kill — kill — Kill!
My birthday, and I have begun the great work. John Elder is dead. Even now the police are searching for the one-legged man who killed him. One-legged! I wonder if the fools will ever see through my little scheme for sending them hunting the wild goose.
The good work continues. Bascom and Belding are gone the way of Elder. So may all men go who lift their hands against the holy gods!
Fellows closed the book and threw it aside.
“A mad man!” I whispered.
“A religious fanatic of the worst type,” Fellows answered. “I think I can piece his story together. He became enamored with native life and probably fell into the hands of the priests. Or perhaps a woman led him to the native shrines. And their damnable religion got into his blood and drove him mad.”
Smithers scratched his head.
“But what made him kill?”
“Because his victims were the enemies of his religion. All four of them knew the evil practices of his cult; knew how his. priests were holding back the people of India. With their best efforts and their money, here in England, they were fighting the battles of their dark-skinned brothers thousands of miles away.”
“Now will you tell us how you found this fellow out?”
The question came from Inspector Grant. Fellows nodded and began.
“There was one thing that bothered me from the time Wonderly entered the room upstairs. And that was his explanation for not hearing Parkington’s cry and the ensuing commotion which I and the rest of us must have made.
“You remember he said that he was totally deaf in the right ear. That would have been all right had I not happened to remember that I sat on his right side at dinner tonight and once spoke to him in a voice barely above a whisper in his right ear. And he heard perfectly.
“My first idea was that the man was a coward and had stayed in his room because he had been afraid to come out and see what all the noise was about. I held to that opinion until we had come downstairs and I left you to wander about the garden.
“When I went outside, my first impulse was to take a lantern and examine the famous foot-prints. I did so and traced them as you did down to the stone road. Then I came back to the house and began to wander aimlessly about the other side of it.
“I ended up a few yards away from Wonderly’s window. Happening to glance downward, I saw something that sent the blood racing through my veins. There on the ground before me in a soft spot on the gravel were another set of foot-prints. And these were of a man with two legs wearing shoes that seemed to correspond to the single shoe worn by the man with one leg.
“I raced around to the other side of the house and verified my suspicion. Then I went back to my find.
“I took the direction the prints pointed out and followed it slowly, my lantern close to the ground. A ways farther on I found another set of prints and so on every little while I found them until I had made a wide detour and was out on the stone road where the murderer’s prints began and ended.