Читать книгу The Flirting Fool - Aidan de Brune - Страница 4

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INSPECTOR Saul Murmer's first impulse was to throw his weight against the door and burst it open. A moment and he recognised the futility of such action. He was on the wrong side of the door to exert any leverage on the lock. He bent down and peered into the keyhole. The key was still in the lock. He felt in his pockets; there was nothing in them that could help him. He shrugged. After all he was only a detective in real life; not one of those super men from a novel, who carried habitually a collection of burglar tools, without a thousand to one chance against using them in a life-time.

"Slick!" He straightened, and scratched his head. Then he remembered and went to the mirror, trying to flatten his hair from the rebellious curls.

"Well, what's to be done now. Sure that girl's got the wind up. Wonder why? Perhaps she thought I'd ask her name and address, and broadcast it to New South Wales scandal-mongers that I'd found her in a man's house at midnight. Umph. Maybe that!"

He glanced about the handsomely furnished room, then went to the window and threw up the sash. The window overlooked the gardens at the back of the house. They lay, dark and drear, under the faint night light. The next house was some distance away and not a light gleamed in any one of its many windows. From the window the wall dropped sheer to the ground more than thirty feet below—too far for a man to jump.

He turned back into the room and switched on all the lights. On the table by the bed stood a telephone. Here was a chance! But, was the telephone connected direct with the exchange or working on a house switch? If the latter, then the girl had no doubt disconnected the instrument. He had to chance that. Yet—what a let down. Detective-inspector Murmer, of New Scotland Yard, to have to call the police to free him from a room in which a slip of a girl had locked him!

With his hand on the telephone Murmer thought quickly then lifted the receiver and dialled a number. A long wait, and then a voice sounded on the wire. "Get me Mr. Pater—Flat 5, please. Important!"

An indistinct murmur and then silence. Nearly five minutes passed before the Inspector recognised a voice speaking through the instrument.

"That you, John? Saul speaking. I'm in a house up Edgecliff way. Something queer here. Where? Wonthaggi avenue—but I'm damned if I know the number. You'll find the front door open—about fifty yards from the harbour corner of the road. A two-storey place. Yes, I'll wait for you."

He hung up the receiver and turned again to examine the room. Damn that girl! He'd never hear the last of it! The joke would be too good for Pater to keep to himself. The London 'tec locked in a bedroom by a girl! They'd swear he was burglarising the house and want to charge him—more than likely there'd be some foolery—holding a mock trial on a house-breaking charge and sentence him to death or some such rot!

Again he returned to the door, examining the lock. A short search of the room followed and he found a pair of scissors and a newspaper. He opened the newspaper widely and slipped it under the door, out into the passage. Then with the scissors, he juggled the key in the lock until the wards were vertical. Still more careful work and the key fell on to the newspaper in the passage. Drawing the newspaper into the room he was able to get the key.

So far good. Now he could tell Peter just what he wished of what had happened. There would be no ragging, or nonsense. Taking the key from the lock, after he had released the bolt, he placed it in a drawer. It was nothing for locks in a house to be without keys.

Instinctively his feet led him to the room where he had found the girl on first entering the house. He switched on the light and, as he moved into the room, stopped suddenly-immobile—His eyes had gone to the couch on which the girl had been seated. It was still far from the wall into the room—a strange place for a couch to be. The article was chintz-covered with a deep valance hanging down the front, almost touching the floor. Something projected from under the chintz.

He looked again, his eyes staring with a dawning of fixed horror. The tips of the fingers of a man's hand. Only the top joints, unnaturally white and still, and he recognised that it was the left hand of a man.

For a moment he hesitated, then advanced cautiously, his quick eyes searching suspiciously about the room. He came to the couch and stopped, staring down at the fingers. A moment, and he lifted the valance, exposing a man's hand and forearm. On the little finger of the hand shone light from a big diamond ring.

Murmer stepped back a pace and scanned the couch. The girl had been seated here when he had entered the room. Her long wide skirts had spread out and hidden the jutting hand. She had talked to him, Inspector Murmer, while she had sat quietly over the body of a dead man.

Dead? Yes, he had reason to believe that. The hand was unnaturally still and bloodless. Advancing a step, the detective dropped to his knees and touched the flesh: it was still warm, but there was something in the feel of the skin that indicated death.

Murmer gained his feet and with his eyes measured the space between the back of the couch and the wall. He went round the couch and looked down. One of the man's legs stuck out into the room, exposed almost to the knee. Then, the man had been standing before the couch when he had been killed—and the couch had then stood against the wall. He had fallen directly before the couch—and the girl hearing his shouts in the hall, and his footsteps on the stairs, had pulled the couch forward to cover him. And the girl had sat on the couch, calmly talking to him, while the man lay beneath, dying or dead!

Careful not to disturb the body, Murmer moved the couch back to its proper position against the wall, placing the castors in the old marks on the carpet. He went to the bedroom and found the newspaper. With some scraps of the paper and pins, he marked where the couch legs had been, when the article had stood over the dead man. Now he turned to the dead man.

From his position Murmer deduced that he had been standing before the couch when he had been killed. He had fallen against the edge of the couch and rolled to his present position. Murmer bent over the man, puzzled. Against the white of the neck was a glint of metal. He moved the head and found a small ornamental dagger, presumably of silver, driven right up to the hilt in the thick neck.

For a moment the detective was puzzled. What sort of dagger was this? when realisation came. It was one of those trinkets girls had adopted to decorate their coats and hats. Surely a small, frail thing to ensure death.

On his knees Murmer examined the wound and the dagger carefully, trying to reconstruct the death-scene. The girl and the man had been alone in the house, in that room together. He remembered that the girl had said that she and the man—Arthur Griffiths, she had called him—had been to the theatre together. He had told her to come to his house to get some papers required at his office early the next morning. At the house the man had given the girl supper. Then in some manner he had induced her to come to this upstairs room. What then?

Murmer directed the light of his torch on the dead man's face There could be no doubt as to what had then occurred. Death had not obliterated the signs of the man's character from his face. When he had got the girl up to this room he had tried to entice her into his bedroom—tried to take advantage of her position in the vacant, silent house at that hour of the night. She had resisted and—Now Murmer remembered the nervous, fidgety manner in which she had played with her hat while she had talked with him. The dagger was one of those ornaments girls decorated their hats with—or stuck on the lapels of their coats. Hat or coat! Either; what did that matter? There was the use to which it had been finally put.

A frail, slight thing for a weapon to cause a man's death. So frail and slight that but for its position, and the corpse, he could hardly have believed it could have caused death. Chance had held the girl's hand to drive it straight and true. The man's flesh, puffed and bloated with evil living, had offered little resistance. Chance had decided that in its progress to death it should avoid bone and muscle! Death by misadventure!

The detective shrugged. He slipped his hand beneath the man's dress shirt, feeling the flesh. The skin was still warm. So far as he could judge the man had been killed a few minutes before he, Murmer, had entered the house. Certainly not after, for he would have heard the man exclaim when the silver had pierced his neck, and he had heard no sound in the house before he had found the girl.

But—why had the street door been open? Who had gone out of the house? Leaving the dead man and the room undisturbed, Murmer went down to the street door. There was no one in sight. He went on to the street gate. As he reached the pavement a furiously-driven taxi swung into the road. At his sharply upraised hand it slid to a stop with a shrieking of brakes and John Pater sprang out.

"What the matter, Saul—pulling a man out of his bed at this hour of the night?"

"Murder!" Murmer turned, to the taxi-driver. "Take a sprint round this block and try and find the patrolman on this beat. Bring him back with you and wait here. Not a word to anyone, or we'll have you down at police headquarters and grill you. Understand?"

"With a beckoning gesture he led the way to the house. In the hall, with the door shut, he turned to his companion.

"A hell of a mess, John," he said with a slight laugh. "I saw the door of this house standing open as I was strolling up the road. As it was after midnight I thought it worth investigating. Came in and found the house apparently empty. Found signs of a supper-party for two, in the dining room. Then went upstairs. Found a room with a light, and in it a girl sitting on a couch—"

"A girl? Where is she?"

"Just what I'd like to know?" Murmer became embarrassed. "She fooled me absolutely. Told me she was waiting for a Mr. Stanley Griffiths." Pater nodded, understandingly, as his comrade paused. "She seemed nervous; but I put that down to my walking in on her unexpectedly. She told me that Griffiths had gone to his bedroom—the room opposite where I had found her—to fetch some papers. I went in search of him and—and—damn it, you've got to know, John, sooner or later—she locked me in the room!"

"Gee!" For a moment Pater looked at his friend, startled, then burst into a loud guffaw. "Caught you, old man! Well?"

"I got out and went to the room where I had found the girl. The couch on which she had been sitting had been pulled well forward into the room. Something was sticking from under the flounce arrangement in front. It was a man's hand. The couch had been pulled out to conceal him and—" the detective's voice changed strangely. "Man, she was sitting over a dead man, her long skirts concealing him, while she talked to me."

"What's the matter here?"

A form came out of the dusk of the passage into the room. The two inspectors turned to face the patrolman. "Why, it's Mr. Pater and Mr. Murmer. The taxi-driver told me that—"

"Find the telephone, Preston." Pater spoke abruptly. "Ring up headquarters and tell them there's murder here. I want the doctor, the finger prints expert, and others of the gang. They'll understand."

He turned to Murmer. "We'll have a look at that dining room first. If that girl had supper there she's left her finger prints all over the place. Said she was Griffiths' secretary, did she? Well, she won't be difficult to pick up."

"You'd better come upstairs and see him first." Murmer interposed. "I'd like to get his identity straight. We'll have that constable, too—Preston, you called him. Being on this beat he should know Griffiths. That girl told me so many lies that I'd like to get one point of truth as soon as possible."

Pater nodded. He went to the dining-room door and turned the key in the lock, drawing it out and dropping it into the side pocket of his jacket. They waited at the foot of the stairs until the constable joined them. "Headquarters is sending out the squad, Mr. Pater," he reported.

"Know this house?" Murmer spoke.

"Mr. Griffiths' house, sir—Mr. Stanley Griffiths." The man answered promptly. "Rather a rackety customer. Keeps late hours and entertains quite a lot of friends—" he hesitated and concluded. "Ladies mostly."

"Umph! Got a family?"

"No, a bachelor, sir. Servants sleep out."

In spite of discipline, Preston's eye decidedly winked. "They might be shocked at the goings on here sometimes."

"Then you know him? You've spoken to him?"

"Well, yes, sir. Good for a tip or so, at the right times of the year. Pleasant spoken man, but—" The constable shrugged.

"Place ever reported?"

"One or two of the neighbours complained of the noise when he's had parties. I got orders once to tip him off. Took it good-naturedly, and said there wouldn't be any more complaints."

"Well off?"

"Should say he was. Seemed to always have plenty of money. Usually there's a taxi hanging about until long after this time. Didn't seem to mind keeping 'em waiting with the meter ticking over."

Murmer nodded abruptly and led the way upstairs. He came to the door of the room where the body lay and flung it open. For moments the three men in the doorway surveyed the still body before the couch. Suddenly Murmer turned to the constable.

"Know him?"

"That's Mr. Griffiths, sir." The man answered emphatically. "Lord, he's been stabbed."

"Seen a girl about here tonight?"

Preston shook his head. "You saw me turn into this road to-night?" Murmer waited for the man's nod of assent. "You didn't see a girl come out of this house ten minutes later?"

"Couldn't have, sir. I recognised you, Mr. Murmer, and after I passed you I turned the corner and went up the road behind here. At the top I came into the main road and went to point to meet the sergeant. It was there that the taxi-driver found me waiting for him—my sergeant, I mean."

"You remember passing me in this street, then." Murmer turned to the man quickly. "I passed you about thirty yards from the gate of this house. Why didn't you notice that this house-door was open, and investigate?"

"The house-door open?" The man stuttered his surprise. "Why, it wasn't open when I passed; I'll swear to that. I noticed that there wasn't a light showing and flashed my light on the door, same as I do with all houses. I wait for the houses to settle down for the night and then put the light on them to see they're all safe."

"You'll swear the hall-door was closed when you passed?" Murmer tried to conceal his amazement. "S'pose you'll be surprised when I tell you that it was half open when I came to it—quite enough open for anyone to notice it. Now, how long would it take me to walk from where I met you to the gate of this house?"

"Half a minute, sir," Preston replied promptly.

"Then, if we're both right that door opened during the minute after you passed it and I came to the gate. But I'll swear no one came out of the house to the pavement during that minute. I saw you coming down the road and I watched you. I watched up the street after I passed you. No one came out of this house. Now, what do you make of that?"

The constable did not answer. He shrugged, almost imperceptibly. For a moment Murmer stared at the man. He believed he was telling the truth. Yet, how could someone come out of the house and get away, with the gate under his observation all the time?

Abruptly, he spoke again: "Ever seen Mr. Griffiths' secretary—the girl from his office?"

"Not to know her as such, Mr. Murmer." Now the Englishman's eyes turned on Pater. The Inspector nodded and Murmer spoke again.

"Get to the gate, Preston, and watch out for the headquarters' car. Mr. Pater and I are going to have a look at the remains of the supper-party, in the dining room."

Downstairs in the hall again, Pater pulled the key from his pocket and unlocked the door. As they entered the dining room the Englishman halted with an exclamation of amazement. The disorder of the supper table had disappeared. The crockery, glass and silver had been piled neatly in the centre of the table and the cloth thrown up all round to cover it. On the floor, close to one of the legs of the table, lay a soiled and crumpled napkin.

"That's broke it!" Murmer spoke with chagrin in his voice. "That damned girl's been here. Remembered finger prints. She's wiped every article on the table, and I guess the rest of the room as well. Gosh! She's got brains, that girl; even if she is a crook—a murderess!"

"What about upstairs?" Pater turned to the door. "I'm betting she didn't forget that."

Murmer made a gesture of despair. "She was wearing gloves when I saw her. I may be mistaken, of course, but I'll bet you a weeks pay she's wiped every fingerprint from where she's been in this house."