T seemed to me (perhaps because I was but half-awake) that there was something peculiarly sinister in the sudden ring of the telephone bell which sounded at my bedside, sharply and insistently, in the gloom of that December morning. Incidentally, as I pulled myself up to answer it, I glanced at the clock on my mantelpiece, and noticed that it was already past nine. Then I remembered that I had not got to bed until a long way past midnight, and must have slept much more soundly than I usually did. I felt a sense of comfortable reflection in remembering that, so far as I knew, I had nothing particular to do that morning, and, for the moment, I yawned, and stretched my arms.
The telephone bell rang again. I picked up the receiver.
“Yes?” I said.
A voice which I recognised at once as that of a man, a barrister, of my acquaintance who lived in chambers in the Temple, came through. It sounded hurried, agitated.
“That you, Campenhaye? This is me—Cotherstone. I say—can you come here—my chambers—at once? Just now?”
“I’m not yet out of bed. Will an hour do?”
“No, I want you at once—at once, you understand? Something very serious has happened. I want you here before the police are fetched. Do hurry up!”
“Very well. But what is it?”
“I don’t know. Come quick!”
“I’ll be with you inside twenty minutes,” I answered.
I was living at that time in rooms in Whitehall Court. It took but little time to make a remarkably hurried and primitive toilet, to descend the lift, to hail the first taxi-cab I saw: within a quarter of an hour from hanging up the receiver I was running up the stairs of the old house in King’s Bench Walk in which Cotherstone lived in modest bachelor fashion. Half-way I met Cotherstone himself, and behind him I saw the frightened face of a man who plainly belonged to the class from which college scouts, superior caretakers, and single gentlemen’s gentlemen naturally spring. And if his face wore a frightened expression, Cotherstone’s was an anxious and puzzled one.
“That’s right,” he said, with an obvious sigh of relief, as I ran up. “Here, come into my room a minute—you come too, Grimes. Look here, Campenhaye, I sent for you because I wanted you to have a look into this before we send for the police—they’ll have to be sent for, without doubt.”
“Give me a clear idea of what you’re driving at,” I said.
“All right. There’s a man lying dead in the chambers across there. Old Taplin. Stone dead!”
“Who is he?” I asked.
“Practised at the Chancery Bar. Retired, recluse sort of chap, always. I was on little more than speaking terms with him. Oh, he’s quite dead!”
“Why have you sent for me, Cotherstone?” I asked quietly.
“Because—because I think there’s something queer. And as soon as Grimes here fetched me across and I saw—it—I thought of you, and of your reputation as a specialist in criminology, you know, and I thought I’d like you to see things, to look at things, just as they really are, you know, before we sent for the police.”
“But—why?” I repeated.
Cotherstone gave me a queer look which, somehow, seemed to take in the man who stood, silent, watchful, still frightened-looking, near the door.
“Come and see for yourself,” answered Cotherstone.
There was a door across the landing on which appeared a single name painted in white letters on the drab background—Mr. C. B. Taplin. Grimes opened it with a key, which he had carried in his hand; opened another behind it; led us through an outer room into an inner one. There the wick of a tall standard lamp was just flickering out; in what illumination it afforded, and in the pale, fog-laden light which came in between hastily-opened curtains, I saw the dead man.