From the Collective's Notes, of the Days in London
The papers from the week following the party's return to London from Garway are fragmentary. What survives is largely in his Lordship's hand, and in such notes as Sergeant Tomlinson set down at the time. The Editor has assembled them into such order as could be managed, and presents them here as memoranda rather than narrative.
The party arrived at Paddington upon the evening of Monday the ninth of October. The Sergeant was met, on his own doorstep, with a card from Chief-Inspector D'Eath of the Bow Division. The Inspector requested an interview at Scotland Yard at the Sergeant's earliest convenience, and had pressed the matter with some insistence.
The Sergeant did not reach the Yard that evening. Upon his walk home from Paddington, he came upon a man being beaten in the street by a small crowd. The man was one Vishal Mandal, employed in some clerical capacity by the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. The Sergeant intervened. The notes do not record what was said.
Of the Chief-Inspector's Investigations
The interview at Scotland Yard took place the following morning. The Inspector, in his customary manner, was both thorough and discreet. The Sergeant's notes from the conversation are reproduced below in such order as the Editor has been able to determine.
Upon the Ghost Station. In addition to the five members of his Lordship's brother's Vigilance Committee, the Chief-Inspector had recovered from the premises:
- The body of Phillip Johnstone, late of Limehouse, identified by witnesses.
- Mary Evans, a haberdasher of Cheapside, survived by her husband John. The circumstances of her presence the Inspector did not undertake to explain.
- Seven men of Indian extraction, of whom three appeared to have been dispatched by the Vigilance Committee and four by Constable Tomlinson and the Inspector himself.
Upon the Punjab Spice Company. The premises were owned by one Richard Nichols, of whom the Inspector took a charitable view: Nichols, in the Inspector's judgement, had no knowledge of the cult and had been employed as an unwitting front. Ten Lascar labourers had been in his service. None had returned to work after the events of the nineteenth of September. Seven of their number had been accounted for at the Ghost Station. Three remained unaccounted for.
The Inspector had reviewed Nichols's ledgers. The business was, by his account, above board: spice from Karachi in the Punjab, with one further correspondent — a dealer of long standing in Damascus, by name Fazlul Karim. Of late, Karim had requested Nichols to procure a mineral sample of a kind not usually in the company's line. Nichols had complied.
The sample was found in a locked compartment of Nichols's office cabinet. A small wooden crate, of approximately twelve inches square, bore the mark of Uranium Mines Ltd, South Terras, Cornwall. Upon the crate lay a letter addressed to Nichols from the mine's managing director. Within the crate was a quantity of torbernite — a mineral known to those in the trade by the name Green Jim.
The Chief-Inspector, having shared his findings, indicated that the matter was now of a complexion that exceeded his Division's competence, and that he was content to leave its further pursuit in such hands as his Lordship might see fit to engage. He would, however, be obliged for any intelligence that might in due course return to him.
Of Mr Clarence Kensington
The party's other matter, that week, was the letter from Mr Clarence Kensington — the literary representative who had written, in some distress, on behalf of Professor George Wyndham. The Captain called at Mr Kensington's offices upon the Wednesday, with his Lordship in attendance. Mr Kensington's secretary, a Mr Harold Fallow, conducted them in.
Mr Kensington, set out what he knew. Professor Wyndham had travelled to the Middle East some months previously, in pursuit of researches for a forthcoming volume; his researches had subsequently led him into India, and from India he had returned to the Levant. His subject was the alliance, in the time of Saladin, between the Crusader states and the Order of the Assassins, in opposition to Saladin's siege of Aleppo. The Professor had been engaged in determining the reason for that alliance.
Mr Kensington had received from the Professor a telegram upon the twenty-sixth of September. He had attempted to reply, and had been unable to obtain any further word.
The notes here become more sparse. The party returned to Bloomsbury and conferred. What was decided is not recorded in the surviving papers. What is recorded is that, upon the following morning, his Lordship instructed Spencer to make enquiries regarding passages to India.
— The Editor