The Mystery of a Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume Read Free Book Online

it’s never shut easy since, an’ I ain’t got no money to get it put right, an’ Mr Whyte walks back to his room laughing.’
    â€˜Did he make any remark to you?’
    â€˜No; except he’d bin worried by a loonatic.’
    â€˜And what was the stranger’s name?’
    â€˜That I can’t tell you, as Mr Whyte never told me. He was very tall with a fair moustache, an’ dressed as I told you.’
    Mr Gorby was satisfied.
    â€˜That is the man,’ he said to himself, ‘who got into the hansom cab and murdered Whyte; there’s no doubt of it! Whyte and he were rivals for the heiress.’
    â€˜What d’y think of it?’ said Mrs Hableton curiously.
    â€˜I think,’ said Mr Gorby slowly, with his eyes fixedon her, ‘I think that there is a woman at the bottom of this crime.’

CHAPTER SIX
    MR GORBY MAKES FURTHER DISCOVERIES
    When Mr Gorby left Possum Villa no doubt remained in his mind as to who had committed the murder. The gentleman in the light coat had threatened to murder Whyte even in the open street—these last words being especially significant—and there was no doubt that he had carried out his threat. The committal of the crime was merely the fulfilment of the words uttered in anger. What the detective had now to do was to find who the gentleman in the light coat was, where he lived, and, having found out these facts, ascertain his doings on the night of the murder.
    Mrs Hableton had described him, but was ignorant of his name, and her very vague description might applyto dozens of young men in Melbourne. There was only one person who, in Mr Gorby’s opinion, could tell the name of the gentleman in the light coat, and that was Moreland, the intimate friend of the dead man. They appeared from the landlady’s description to have been so friendly that it was more than likely Whyte would have told Moreland all about his angry visitor. Besides, Moreland’s knowledge of his dead friend’s life and habits might be able to supply the answer as to whom Whyte’s death would have been a gain, and whom the heiress was the deceased boasted he was going to marry.
    What puzzled the detective was that Moreland should be ignorant of his friend’s tragic death, seeing that the papers were full of the murder, and that the reward gave an excellent description of the personal appearance of the deceased. The only way in which Gorby could account for Moreland’s extraordinary silence was that he was out of town, and had neither seen the papers nor heard anyone talking about the murder. If this was the case he might either stay away for an indefinite time or might come back after a few days. At all events it was worthwhile going down to St Kilda in the evening on the chance that Moreland might have returned to town, and would call to see his friend. So, after his tea, Mr Gorby put on his hat, and went down to Possum Villa, on what he could not help acknowledging to himself was a very slender possibility.
    Mrs Hableton opened the door for him and in silence led the way, not into her own sitting-room, but into a much more luxuriously furnished apartment, which Gorby guessed at once was that of Whyte’s. He looked keenly round the room, and his estimate of the dead man’s character was formed at once.
    â€˜Fast,’ he said to himself, ‘and a spendthrift. A man who would have friends, and possibly enemies, among a very shady lot of people.’
    What led Mr Gorby to this belief was the evidences which surrounded him of Whyte’s mode of life. The room was well furnished, the furniture being covered with dark-red velvet, while the curtains on the windows and the carpet were all of the same somewhat sombre hue.
    â€˜I did the thing properly,’ observed Mrs Hableton, with a satisfactory smile on her hard face. ‘When you wants young men to stop with you the rooms must be well furnished, an’ Mr Whyte paid