Читать книгу A Tail of Gold - David Hennessey - Страница 10

Table of Contents

ON Friday morning, while Boswell Smart was laughing and joking with Julia Careless on the box-seat of the Seldom Seen coach, Gammage smoked a cigar in his garden, lazily wondering whether he should take a run into town, or lunch at home and write some private letters.

He was strolling back to the house, when a servant came to tell him that he was wanted on the telephone.

'Who is it, Simpson?'

'Don't know, sir. It's a man's voice; but he would not give his name. Told me to bring Mr. Gammage to the 'phone at once.'

'Ah, some one from Parliament House; go and tell them I'm coming.'

'Can't be the Premier, or the Attorney General,' he thought, 'they're both out of town. There's no business doing, must be some fellow at the club.'

'Is that you Mr. Gammage?': came a strange voice over the wire.

'It is, who's that speaking?'

'Sergeant Hopkins, of the Criminal Investigation Department.'

'Well, what the dickens do you want with me?'

'Beg your pardon, sir; but there's a bit of trouble at your office, and I should like to ask you a few questions.'

'Trouble! what do you mean? Has the place been broken into or burnt down?'

The Sergeant was a youngish man, recently promoted, and unaware of the deference demanded by cabinet ministers from civil servants and other officers of the State. He had just hit upon a theory too, other officers of his department were listening, and possibly it was a case of 'the new broom'—so he took no notice of the Hon. Ebenezer's question, and began what he intended to be a kind of departmental cross-examination:

'Were you in your office on Christmas Day?'

'What the blazes has that got to do with you?' thundered Gammage indignantly. 'Who are you, and how dare you question a minister of the Crown over the telephone? If the office has been broken into, go and inform the police.'

With this Gammage started to ring off.

'Don't ring off Mr. Gammage, or you may be sorry. Do you know there's a dead woman in your board room?'

The Honourable Ebenezer's indignation had so far got the better of him, that he lost the word 'dead,' so he bawled back—

'Have her arrested then, for being unlawfully upon the premises. Like your impudence to ring me up about a matter of this sort. Ring up the Company's secretary: 0013 Windsor.'

'But the woman's dead!'

'Then take her to the Morgue, you idiot!'

'I'll do nothing of the sort,' retorted the officer, losing his head entirely. 'The woman has been found dead by the caretaker in your office, and by the look of the corpse, she's been dead several days. It's quite possible that she has been murdered, and I think that it is right, sir, that you should know that Detective Rummage is listening through the other receiver, and hears all you say. Several other witnesses are in the board room, listening to what I say. I think you'd better be careful, sir.'

Gammage did not immediately reply, so the Sergeant continued—

'There's a man here who says he saw you come into your office on Christmas morning, and we think that in your own interests you'd better come here at once.'

Gammage was a good deal surprised by this plain-spoken speech addressed to a person of his standing, so, after one or two more uncomplimentary remarks, he informed the police-officer that he would motor round at once.

'I'll make that beggar sit up for daring to talk like that to me on the telephone. These dashed police think they run the country!'

But it was only now that the seriousness of the situation dawned upon him. He had left his office late on Tuesday, dined with a couple of lady friends in town, and afterwards gone to the club. It would never do to have their names brought into it. Then he remembered something which gave him an unpleasant start. He was the last to leave his flat that evening, and the office doors all stood open as he passed out. The caretakers were busy sweeping and dusting, and he remembered a woman stopping him on the stairs—the lifts had ceased working—who had a letter in her hand addressed to Major Smart, and asking the way to his office. Gammage had said: 'I believe he has gone, Madam; but his office is on the next landing.' She had replied: 'I'll go up at any rate and leave the letter.'

'This,' thought Gammage, 'might be the woman!'

As for Christmas Day, he could, of course, prove an alibi, as he was at home in the morning and afterwards with his family at church.

'Ah!' thought he, 'I'll ring up Smart, and see what he has to say about it.'

'Is that Major Smart?'

'Oh, he's away from home, is he? When did he leave?'

'Yesterday morning, you say. Wasn't that very sudden?'

'Had a telegram. Ah! can you tell me where he has gone?'

'No sir, Mrs. Smart might know; but she's out just now.'

'Thank you. I'll ring up again.'

'Dashed queer!' was Ebenezer's comment, as he stepped into his car. 'He said nothing at the club about going away.'

When Gammage arrived at the office, he found a small crowd of newspaper reporters, policemen, and the general public in his board room. They had taken photographs of every possible thing about the place, including the dead woman. One persistent press-man actually snapshotted Gammage, as he looked round in anger at the crowd.

'Clear out of this,' was his first articulate speech to the press-men and curious public.

'Now,' said he, addressing the detectives and caretaker, when the board room door was, at last, closed upon the intruders. 'Where did this dead woman come from, and what's the meaning of all this?'

'The discovery was made by John Purdy, caretaker of these offices, at eight-thirty this morning,' replied Hopkins, in a slightly elevated, semi-official voice.

'Oh! John Purdy told you about it, did he? Well, have you asked him whether he has seen this woman before to-day; or whether he killed her, and put her in this room?'

'Was any one with you Purdy, when you discovered this thing?' he asked, turning round to the caretaker, without waiting for a reply from the detective.

'No sir?' replied Purdy, who, being a nervous man, was already shaking in his shoes.

'Have you cautioned this man that anything he says may be used against him in evidence?' was Gammage's next question to the police-officer.

'I have not,' said the officer, shortly. Somehow the bottom had been knocked out of his theory by this unexpected turning of the tables upon himself.

'Well you'd better do so; and one of you ring up the ambulance, and get the corpse taken to the Morgue. Also notify the coroner...and you'd better ring up the Company's secretary, and let him take charge of the affair.'

'As for you, Hopkins, I'm surprised that you did not know better than to allow the board room of a minister of the Crown, in the absence of his staff, to be invaded by a tribe of long-nosed press-men and curious idlers. Get the corpse out of this, and tell the Commissioner to report the death to the coroner in the usual way. If I'm wanted to give evidence at the inquest, I'm afraid it won't be very flattering to the police. I expect the medical examination will show that the woman died of heart failure through the heat, or through climbing up these miserable flights of stairs after the lifts had ceased working. You'd better keep your eye on Purdy; the woman might have been an acquaintance of his. I know nothing about her...Ah, here's the secretary. He'll look after things. I've an appointment at Parliament House.'

With this, Gammage descended by the lift to his motor-car. He had got over the matter, for the present, without saying anything about the dead woman having called to see Major Smart. But how about that letter? 'I'll get some lunch at the House,' he thought, 'and then call back and see Smart's clerk, if I can, and find out whether any letter has been left for him. But wherever can he have taken himself off to so suddenly and why?'

Gammage called again, but learned nothing of any letter, and Mrs. Smart could only tell him that the Major had gone somewhere in the country beyond Reefton, to inspect a mine.

The Mud Major was getting on the nerves of the Cabinet Minister. It was not only his money losses by him; but too many unaccountable events were becoming connected with him. The death of this unknown woman perplexed and annoyed him. She certainly had a letter for Smart, and he had cleared out of Melbourne without leaving any address or any reason for his sudden departure. Besides, it was not a very nice thing for a minister of the Crown to be mixed up with an affair of this description.

A couple of days after it was actually mentioned at a cabinet meeting, and a scurrilous Melbourne print, in an article entitled: 'Gammage has a dead woman in his office' asked whether his colleagues hadn't asked him to resign!

Gammage determined to have it out with the Major on his return, and if his explanation was not thoroughly satisfactory, he'd cut him dead, the next time he met him at the club.