Page:The Mystery of a Hansom Cab.djvu/44

40 "Oh, I don't know so much about that," answered Felix, shrewdly; "some fellows are like trifles at a party—froth on top, but something better underneath."

"What a greedy simile," said Calton, sipping his wine; "but I'm afraid the police will have a more difficult task in discovering the man who committed the crime. In my opinion he's a deuced clever fellow."

"Then you don't think he will be discovered?" asked Brian, rousing himself out of his brown study.

"Well, I don't go as far as that," rejoined Calton; "but he has certainly left no trace behind him, and even the Red Indian, in whom instinct for tracking is so highly developed, needs some sort of a trail to find out his enemies. Depend upon it," went on Calton, warming to his subject, "the man who murdered Whyte is no ordinary criminal; the place he chose for the committal of the crime was such a safe one."

"Do you think so?" said Rolleston. "Why, I should think that a hansom cab in a public street would be very unsafe."

"It is that very fact that makes it safer," replied Mr. Calton, epigrammatically. "You read De Quincey's account of the Marr murders in London, and you will see that the more public the place the less risk there is of detection. There was nothing about the gentleman in the light coat who murdered Whyte to excite Royston's suspicions. He got into the cab with Whyte, no noise or anything likely to attract attention was heard, and then he got out. Naturally enough, Royston drove to St. Kilda, and never suspected Whyte was dead till he looked inside and touched him. As to the man in the light coat, he doesn't live in Powlett Street—no—nor in East Melbourne either."

"Why not?" asked Frettlby.

"Because he wouldn't have been such a fool as to leave a trail to his own door; he did what the fox often does—he doubled. My opinion is that he either went right through East Melbourne to Fitzroy, or he walked back through the Fitzroy Gardens into town. There was no one about at that time of the morning, and he could walk home to his lodgings, hotel, or whatever it was, with impunity. Of course, this is a theory that may be wrong;