Inspector French's Greatest Case (33 page)

The scheme as a whole worked out according to plan—save for Miss Winter's lapse in omitting to wait for and destroy the cipher letter—but though the principals did not know it, a coincidence took place which came within an ace of wrecking it. When Sylvia and Harrington were driving home from the East End on the night of the crime they saw Mr. Duke turn out of Hatton Garden into Holborn. He was hurrying anxiously along the pavement with very different mien to his usual upright, leisurely bearing. There was something furtive about his appearance, and his face, revealed by a bright shaft of light streaming from a confectioner's shop, was drawn and haggard. Fearing some ill news, Sylvia had stopped the taxi and hurried after him, but before she had reached the pavement he had disappeared. She did not, however, take the matter seriously until at breakfast the next morning he told her of the crime. Even then it never occurred to her to suspect him; in fact, she had forgotten the incident, but when he went on to state, as it were casually, that he had been at his club all evening and had walked directly home from there, she remembered. She realised that he was lying, and suspicion was inevitable. In desperation lest Harrington should unwittingly give away information which might put the police on her father's track, she rang him up and arranged an immediate meeting at which she warned him of the possibilities. That afternoon Harrington called to tell her how things had gone at the office, and then she had overwhelmed him by insisting on the postponement of the wedding until the affair should be cleared up. When, however, she learned that French suspected Harrington and herself of knowing the criminal, she thought the postponed marriage might give direction to his investigations, and to avoid this she gave out that the ceremony had once again been arranged. The poor girl's mind was nearly unhinged thinking of what she should do in the event of the police making an arrest, but fortunately for her she was not called upon to make the decision.

It remains merely to say that some weeks later Reginald Ainsley Duke paid the supreme penalty for his crimes, and his daughter, hating London and England for the terrible memories they held, allowed herself to be persuaded for the third time to fix the date of the wedding with Charles Harrington, and to seek happiness with him on his brother's ranch in Southern California. The firm of Duke & Peabody weathered the storm, and the surviving partners did not forget the Gething sisters when balancing their accounts.