Читать книгу Chief Inspector Pointer's Cases - 12 Golden Age Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding - Страница 13

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THE Chief Inspector gave the manager no time to collect himself. He went rapidly over Mr. Beale's accusation that it was Mr. Hughes who had offered the papers of the dead man to him.

"I'm in an awful hole." The manager poured out a glass of whisky and soda with a shaking hand.

"Pretty bad," agreed the unsympathetic police-officer, "but perhaps it might be worse." His glance around the room pointed his meaning. The tumbler was set unsteadily back on the tray.

"I'm a ruined man in any case. I might as well have thrown up the sponge when you came last time—"

"Perhaps," murmured Pointer.

"—but here's the true story. You can take it down, and I'll sign it here before we go to the police-station, or you can arrest me first and have it afterwards."

"Let's have it here."

"Well, the case was exactly as I told you up to that moment when Beale and I sat here after you had gone, talking over the suicide. I jumped up, for I suddenly remembered after all that Eames—I mean Erskine—had given me a cardboard box to keep in the safe. I had joked him about it, saying it looked like a box of chocolates, and he had said it wasn't much more important, but still he wished me to take care of it for him. Without thinking—for it is one of my strictest rules that I never go to the safe without the booking-clerk or the hall porter with me, and never in the presence of a visitor, I unlocked the combination and opened it. That shows how rattled I was by what had just happened. I pulled out the box—"

"Wrapped in green and white striped paper?"

"That's the one. And I said something about 'Good God, I forgot to speak of this to the police.' I moved towards the door when Mr. Beale stopped me. He was tremendously excited, and said that as soon as he. had seen Eames' face in the full light he had recognized him as a dangerous crook whose partner, and doubtless murderer, he (Beale) was after. In fact, he stuffed me with the same yarn he filled you up with when you arrested Carter."

The Chief Inspector gave no sign that he felt the dig.

"He declared that the box would contain plans and signals in cipher for the use of the gang. Would I let him have a look at it? I finally—well, I refused at first"—the bitterness of the manager's voice told the whole story—"but you know what a way Mr. Beale has with him. He claimed to recognize the plan of his own house in the note-book, and then—I'd just been letting myself go a bit about what a blow the suicide would be to the hotel, which was having its work cut out to keep its head above water—he referred to that. Said that he wanted a scoop for his paper. Finally he offered me one thousand pounds down on the table for the box, and I let him take it for another five hundred. Mind you, I'm not trying to clear myself, but I believed his story. And of course when you arrested Carter I thought what a Quixotic fool I should have been to have acted differently."

He stopped and had another drink.

"But that isn't all that you have to tell."

"You mean the pages torn out of the receipt-book. You know about them."

"No, I don't mean them. I know all about that, as you say. I mean something else."

"Do you want my confession as to how I killed Eames?" asked the manager sardonically.

"I want to know first who the man was you showed over the balcony rooms, including No. 14, at midday on Saturday, August third?"

"That was Sikes. He lends money strictly on the q.t. and at only seven hundred per cent. But the mere idea that his little hobby might get about infuriated him so that after you sent that blundering chap of yours down to investigate he broke the whole thing off. He's aiming to get into Parliament: that's why he's Sykes with a 'y' now."

"Humph! And had you never seen Erskine before?"

"Never."

"Nor Mr. Beale?"

"No. I assure you, Inspector, that I had never seen either man before."

"And now about those 'phones on Saturday at five o'clock?"

But the manager could only repeat that he knew nothing more than he had already told the police. He could not recollect 'phoning at all about five o'clock; but if he had, it had been a vain attempt to get through to his hatter.

The police-officer asked him to sign his statement.

"We may not have to use it—"

The manager drew a deep breath.

"—but, of course, you must keep yourself within touch of our people. And now, Mr. Manager, what can you tell me about what has become of the occupants of rooms eleven and twelve?"

The manager looked over his papers.

"Mrs. Willett left an address in Devonshire to which her letters were to be forwarded. The hall-porter has it, I suppose."

"Yes, but Mrs. Willett did not go there. The Devonshire hotel has no knowledge of her whereabouts beyond the fact that she wrote from here, and engaged a room on August 16th."

The manager was unable to help.

"Now as to Miss Leslie, the occupant of number twelve. She left here on September seventeenth, and all inquiries at the theatre only show that no one has her address. Apparently she has gone away in the midst of an engagement without leaving a trace of her plans."

Here, too, the manager was not able to offer any help. Pointer swung himself on his homeward bus, not over-pleased with his men. He had given orders that the occupants of the balcony rooms were to be kept under constant surveillance, and the two most important ones had slipped away into the unknown. Miss Leslie he had tried to trace through the Thompsons, father and son, and even through the Blacks, but all to no purpose.

"Mrs. Able has very tactfully chosen roast veal," O'Connor jibed as he took his seat at the table. "Now, wanderer, what of thy goings to and fro?"

Pointer merely raised his eyebrows and asked what was under the other cover, and not until the meal was well out of the way and he had lit a pipe did he give a rapid review of his "holiday tramp."

O'Connor thought that the green and white scrap of paper backed up the manager's rather than Beale's version of the selling of the papers, and Pointer agreed that it might, but he did not say how much of the rest of the tale of either man seemed to him likely.

Next morning he had a long interview with Carter, and found that, as he thought, the Canadian had arrived on July twentieth in London. He had expected to go straight to a hotel as near Erskine's as possible, but on arrival at Liverpool Street Station he had been handed a telegram from "Meunier," instructing him to come on to Brussels at once. Erskine had come to meet the train, after engaging a room for him at the Marvel and one at the Enterprise for himself. The connecting balcony was too good to lose, so at their hurried meeting in a corner of the refreshment room, where they posed as strangers, one of whom handed a newspaper to the other and discussed the weather for a moment, it was arranged that Erskine was to write to the Marvel in Carter's name, enclosing enough money to retain number two, while Carter rushed off to Dover and Ostend. Ten days later Carter had to come back to London to buy some special tools he could not get in Brussels, and had spent a couple of hours with Erskine. It was on his way to the night boat-train that he had bought him the cough medicine. When he had returned again on the fatal Saturday night of August 3rd it had been for the express purpose of telling his "pard" that success was certain. The sight of the policeman when the window opened warned him that something was wrong. After an interval he had crept out on to the balcony again and peered into the room. He could see only an empty bed and Miller on guard. Full of anxiety, he had to start back for Brussels at once, followed, though he did not know it, by Beale. Then came hours of torturing uncertainty, and finally the few lines in an English paper telling of "Eames' suicide." Carter could hardly bear to speak of it. But they had each bound themselves before starting from Canada that in case of danger they would separate at once, and in case of any accident to the one, the other would "carry on"; also he was under the most solemn pledges of absolute secrecy to M. Bonnot. So in bitterness of soul he worked on, only determined to avenge his friend's death some day.

"And that day's now, Inspector. I won't rest till I find out who it was that killed Rob, though, mind you, I don't have any doubt as to the man's identity. But I'll work night and day to get the proof."

"You think it's—"

"Beale. Of course. So do you, I guess. He didn't know how few papers Rob had on him. Just because I thought it was dangerous, I didn't give Rob anything of real importance, and those few I did let him have were only because he insisted on our sharing the risks together. Of course, Beale murdered him after he found Rob wouldn't do a deal, which I don't doubt he tried first. Then he did his best to get me out of the way, because he knows well enough that I won't find life worth living till the man who did it is hung. When I came home that night in Brussels earlier than usual from my work and found Beale at my desk I wish to heaven I had killed him instead of merely trussing him up and beating it to Lille. But my pledge to Bonnot tied my hands. They're free now." Carter stretched them out along the table. Long, lean, nervous hands. "At Lille, the little ferret fastened on me again and pretty nearly did for me."

"Pretty nearly," agreed Pointer.

"It was a facer," Carter repeated somberly. "You see, I didn't know whether I had an alibi for Rob's murder or not, for I didn't know what hours were the vital ones, and I had been back in London, I had been on the balcony, I remembered even the couple of boxes of vestas I'd left Rob, and wondered if they would help to trace me out. And suppose I got clear of the charge of having murdered my pard, I was done for by the American frame-up. Only your catching Beale, and the way M. Bonnot handled him, saved me. They wouldn't have let me off under twenty years over there. Beale has tremendous political influence through his paper. The police officer who put the warrant through was some sort of a hyphenated Yank out for a political job."

"Just so. Yes, I see." Pointer turned to his notebook. "Now, to go back to Erskine. Can you tell me what was the cause of the split between him and the Heilbronners?"

"Rob never told me in so many words. He was in love with Mattie Heilbronner, you know—Christine told me she'd given you the points of the case as far as she knew them—but it was some trouble at the factory at the beginning of the war that started it all. He believed that he had stumbled on some devilish German plot to poison the bandages. The mills were turning out hospital supplies, you know. He was certain that old Heilbronner was at the back of it, and after that all was over between them but the burial. Yet even so, when I had knocked my first idea into workable shape, he insisted that the fair thing to do was to offer it to the Amalgamated. They turned it down and began hounding Rob and me out of the business. I won't go into it all, but it only stiffened us. I worked my ideas into something better and tried Bonnot of Lyons. It was really while I was lying in the hospital there that I had come across a replica of an old loom which gave me my first glimmering of an idea. Bonnot told you himself how he took the thing up—cautiously at first and then enthusiastically. The difficulty, however, for Rob and me was to get to Europe. We decided to use Mrs. Erskine's money for that purpose, as it wouldn't save the mills, and started away by different boats under assumed names. And now, Inspector, will you let me help you? Or must I try on my own, or with a private detective, to solve the how and the why of Rob's death? Who did it I feel pretty sure of, as I said."

Pointer decided quickly. He could easier keep Carter under observation in France than in England. To have had a hand in his partner's death, that death that removed from him the necessity to repay past loans, that left him in undisputed possession of a huge fortune,—he must have had an accomplice. Any effort to communicate with the actual poisoner would be far more difficult to carry out undetected in Nice than in London.

"Thank you, Mr. Carter, for your offer. I am starting as soon as I can get away for France—for Nice. I shall be very glad if you care to come—"

"Care to come! You bet I do!"

"But you understand that it may be some time before I can ask your help. There is a good deal of clearing up work—mere routine—to be done first." His tone implied that when a stroke of real genius was felt to be needed, Carter's hour would come.

"I quite understand. As long as I can hope to be of any help—at any time—I'll come. Christine feels as I do. We can't marry until this thing is cleared up. She's as keen on seeing justice done Rob as I am, or nearly so. He wasn't her partner as he was mine. If you'll come downstairs we'll go around to her hotel and hear what she says for herself."

Christine had treated herself to comfortable rooms in a quiet hotel near Baker Street. She was as emphatic as Carter that the one thing for them to do now was to find out and bring to justice the murderer of Robert Erskine. "Though I certainly wasn't much of a help to you?" Her voice made it a question.

"Oh, I don't know about that. I don't deny that I hoped you might have got hold of some direct clue while at the villa,—but that's always a matter of luck, and Mrs. Erskine looks the kind of woman to keep her own confidence—or the confidence of another, even supposing she knows more than she chooses to say. Besides, remember you gave the very important tip of the loaded revolver which she keeps at hand, and the suggestion about her body-guard, as you think her friends may be."

"You don't agree with me?"

The police-officer laughed. "Pointer's away on his holiday. Impenetrable official reserve is the order of the day now, and on your and Mr. Carter's part absolute, unquestioning obedience. Is that a bargain? Thank you; I was sure that you would both see the necessity for my making that an essential of your co-operation. And you must be patient, Miss West. As I told Mr. Carter, there'll be a lot of spade work to be done, if we are to discover any clues at Nice, before there can be any question of either of you helping."

Like her fiancé, Christine said she did not care how long she had to wait, if only she could be of some use.

"Very well, then, we quite understand one another." Pointer seemed regardless of the fact that Carter's real thoughts were a subject of much doubt to him, and that some of his speculations about them were very far from being understood by that young man—"and agree that no plan can be drawn up until I have reconnoitred thoroughly."

"Would it be a help," asked Christine, "if I were to stop with Mrs. Erskine again?"

"I can't say yet."

"I don't think I like the Chief Inspector as much as I did Mr. Pointer." Christine's smile robbed the speech of its bluntness.

"Oh, don't say that!" implored the officer. "Do be original and have a good word for the police! But now about our going. Mr. Carter can start at once. I shall follow by the day after tomorrow at the outside. If you"—he turned to the Canadian—"will put up at, say, the Negresco or the Angleterre, I shall find your name at once and be able to get into touch with you. Should we meet by chance, we are, of course, strangers. And you, Miss West, if you will let Mr. Carter know where you are stopping near Nice—"

"It won't be Avignon!"

"—you could meet quietly. But not more than once a week, please, and, naturally, always at different places and on different days. Through him I shall have your address, and if you'll excuse my addressing you inside any letter or telegram or 'phone as Miss"—his eyes fell on an open magazine—"Miss Gladys—"

Christine shivered.

"—you will know that the message is from me. What name are you going by, Mr. Carter?"

"Crane."

"Good, and you are starting?"

"Tonight, if I can get a ticket. But for God's sake don't let Beale slip through your fingers. Mark my words, he's the man!"

"He won't slip." Pointer shook hands and walked briskly away. He had arranged matters to his liking and his plans were in his own keeping. He wired to the Nice police to be ready to keep an observant eye on Mr. Crane. He would have been glad of the Canadian's immediate help, but he intended to take no risks of confusing the trail.

Pointer's first act on arriving at Nice was to 'phone up the Canadian at the Negresco. Over the wire he obtained a minute account of the way he had spent his two days on the Côte d'Azur. Then he rang up his police friend, and Carter's account of himself was verified in every particular. So far so good. He next presented himself at Mrs. Erskine's. That lady was lying down with a severe headache when his card was taken in to her, but she sent him out word to please call back later, as she very much appreciated his having come to see her. Pointer found her quite full of questions—for her—as to Carter's release. She evidently feared that the police had been hoodwinked by some plausible villain.

"I'm not a revengeful woman," she explained with her plaintive Scotch accent, "but I do not want the murderer of my son to escape."

The Chief Inspector had apparently no explanation to offer beyond the fact of Carter's belated, but absolutely water-tight, alibi.

"Well, of course you must know your business best," she murmured from among her cushions, "but it would take more than a Frenchman's word to have made me set that man free!"

She asked very kindly after Christine, and he did not mention the fact of that young lady's coming marriage to the object of Mrs. Erskine's suspicions.

Mrs. Erskine evidently feared that it would be quite useless, but she had not the slightest objection to his going over again all the Erskine letters in her possession.

"But Robert's letters are missing. You remember the packet I showed you in Paris?"

Pointer did.

"When we returned here—Mrs. Clark came to fetch me: she thought I was too ill to be left to Marie's care alone—the letters had gone. I am sure I placed them in the top of my trunk, or saw Marie put them there just before we started. I had them under my pillow before that. But when Marie unpacked here there was no sign of them. On the whole, I am not sure that their presence was not more of a grief than their absence. But I confess the thought of those letters, sacred to me by my loss, having been lost by some carelessness—" She paused with a worried frown.

It was nearly half past eleven before Pointer made his appearance on the following morning.

Mrs. Erskine had had an old trunk brought down from the attic in which, as she sent him word, she kept everything belonging to family matters of any kind.

There were several letters from Mr. Henry Erskine which were new to the officer. They were all affectionate in tone. It was quite clear from them that he only contemplated remaining away a twelvemonth on his brother's ranch. In all of them, however, there was no faintest clue, no hint of any mystery. The rest of the box concerned the Abercrombies more than the Erskines, and the Chief Inspector gained a very good idea of the stiff but honorable upbringing of Margaret Erskine from them. He went through them and the old books, old bills, and personal trifles which the trunk contained with amazing speed and thoroughness. Then he shut the lid and stood awhile in thought. As he stood there, he heard a soft thud in the next room. To a practiced ear, there is only one thing which makes that sound. A safe-door was being closed in the wall adjoining. A few minutes later he heard Mrs. Erskine speaking from the room beside him. She told Marie to be on hand to let out the gentleman—she had referred to the Chief Inspector as connected with her firm of lawyers—as soon as he should be finished. She did not mention refreshments, he noted, though the day was hot, and the work dry and dusty. Like Christine, Pointer saw that the good lady did not encourage unnecessary expenditure.

He heard her deliberate steps cross the marble hall and the front door shut. He heard Marie go into her mistress's room. Like a shadow he stepped into the drawing-room, of which the door stood open. From an oriel window he looked down at the car waiting below. There was a man sitting in one of the front chairs and a handsome, painted, plump woman on the back seat, dressed in the very height of fashion. Pointer eyed her keenly through his glass from a discreet position behind the curtains. Her black eyes were fastened on the front door. These were evidently the Clarks, and even after Mrs. Erskine had taken her seat he kept his glass leveled until the car turned up the drive and purred out of sight.

He slipped back into the little room where the trunk still stood, and when the maid looked in, after tidying the bedroom next door, she found him apparently hard at work. He glanced up cheerily, to meet a very gloomy stare.

"It's going to be a long job, eh, monsieur?"

"Looks like it. By the way, I forgot to say something to madame. At what hour does she return?"

"Only just in time to dress for dinner. There is a great charity bazaar on at the Castle at which madame has promised to help. She gave us all tickets for the grounds."

"Were you going, too? I heard that there were to be all sorts of amusements."

"I was going, but, if you wish it, I can stay...?"

Hope shone in her face again. Perhaps the jaunt would yet come off.

"No! no!" protested Pointer in genuine horror. "I may be here for hours."

A bank note was slipped into her hand. "Go and enjoy yourself, ma fille, and drink my health at lunch."

Marie was in the seventh heaven, what with the chance to get off for the day after all, the twenty francs, and the compliment to her thirty years. Within a quarter of an hour a voiture, with Marie, her husband, the chef and Mrs. Clark's maid, drove off briskly; for, as Marie said, in what better hands could the villa be left than in that of a gentleman connected with madame's solicitors?

Pointer bolted the doors, and then walked rapidly through the house from cellar to attic. Major Vaughan and his man were away at Monte Carlo, the maid had told him, and he had it all to himself. He took his coat off, and after his rapid general survey examined the rooms in detail. Finally he came to Mrs. Erskine's bedroom. The walls were of grey silk, with here and there grey velvet medallions. After a little measuring he made for the panel beside the window. As on all the others, oxidized metal traceries ornamented the oval. He pressed an ornament which looked the shiniest to his keen eyes. A very few experiments taught him the trick, and the panel swung open on its hinges. At the same time three gongs clanged in muffled fury. Pointer had spent some of his minutes, as he went over the house, to good effect in stuffing sofa cushions around all electric alarums, or the din would have been terrible. The telephone bell beside the bed rang insistently.

"'Elio! 'Elio!" he called in answer; "yes, it is I, Guillaume, and not a burglar. It was as well I had that little chat with you this morning, eh?" and he hung up the receiver. Then he turned back to the safe. A few minutes went by before even his skilled eyes found the right knob which should have been turned first to silence the alarums. The safe had been bought off a firm which had spared no expense in its installation evidently. It was the only one on the premises, and he hoped to find some interesting things in it. He looked at the safe sitting like a shrine deep in its little niche with great respect. "So it's an Aglae. Humph!"

The Aglae safes, turned out very sparingly by Creusot, are the last word in their line. He knew them well. There was one in the Commissioner's office at the Yard. They are pretty to look at. No cumbersome, easily detected combination lock here. A little slit, looking as innocent as a slot-machine, faced him, but any key, whether of another Aglae or not, which was not the right one would set a powerful alarum ringing against the light metal of the outer door which no cushion could deaden, and it would ring until the right key was inserted, if need be for thirty-five days. If a burglar, caring nothing for keys, tried his usual tactics of cutting, he would find an outer case which let itself be opened with ease, and out would stream a volume of gas calculated to render anyone unconscious who stood near it, even though the windows were open. Some Aglae had an alternative plan by which a revolver emptied its six cartridges in the direction where the first cut was made. Altogether, a slight acquaintance with an Aglae was distinctly advisable for any up-to-date cracksman if he wanted a chance to show his talents elsewhere.

Pointer whistled softly. There was only one man in Europe who could help him. In Barcelona, at the foot of Tibidabo, lives a Catalan, a Senor Foch, who works in a simple little shop with his son for the police of seven countries; and lucky it was for the police that honesty had been the motto of the two men, for there is nothing that can be done to lock or key that they cannot do. Only a Foch could copy the key of this safe, supposing Pointer could lay his hands on it for a moment. The Catalans worked only on their own terms. Measurements, weight, and impressions had to be taken, according to their strict rules, or they would refuse the job.

He replaced everything as he had found it, took off the silencers from the various alarums, and proceeded with his room to room inspection. In Major Vaughan's flat he found some things which interested him greatly. He even went so far as to take a tracing of some boots and shoes he found up there, and very familiar the outline would have looked to Watts, too, had he seen it.

It was close on six o'clock when he finished, and the only results to the eye for a very fatiguing day was a little cardboard box of a kind which had contained stationery, a tiny oval box retrieved from a dusty corner of the attic, and a little yellow pill-box, marked "Mrs. Erskine, 14 Ave. de Paris, Biarritz," that had come from a deep pocket of an old travelling bag. Yet with these, and his tracings, and his other discoveries, the Chief Inspector felt more than satisfied.

Next morning he took his leave of Mrs. Erskine, and acknowledged that she had been right in thinking that the papers which he had looked over contained no clue.

"I'm quite sure that the criminal is that man you let go, Carter!"

He did not contradict her. "He's where we can put Our hands on him at any moment," he assured her as he bowed himself out. He had timed his departure to coincide with the hour at which he had learned from Marie that the major and his man were expected to arrive from Monte Carlo. The major would sometimes go regularly to the Casino for a week at a time, or, as now, just for an occasional flutter; on the other hand, months might go by without his trying his luck at the tables, where he generally won. And indeed a week might pass without his leaving his flat at all. He had been gassed in the war, Marie informed Pointer, prompted by his easy questions, "and was now un original—un sauvage, yet often still of a charm!"

The major returned in a dusty motor while Pointer still lingered over some flowers behind a bush of heliotrope. The valet whipped open the door. The major, a shrunken little man, stood blinking irritably into the sunlight with red-rimmed eyes. He caught sight of the Clarks just leaving in their tennis clothes.

"You look like solid ghosts," he grunted in reply to their greetings.

"Won pots of money, you lucky man?" asked the lady.

"Oh, pots and pans!" he nodded. "As you say, I am a lucky devil. Know the difference between a lucky devil and an unlucky one, Clark. You ought, by Gad, but do you?"

Mr. Clark, a sunburnt, good-natured looking man, apparently gave it up.

"A lucky devil helps to skin others, an unlucky one can only be skinned," and the major, with the cackle Christine so much disliked, walked into the house.

"Of a charm certainly!" repeated Pointer to himself with a faint grin as he emerged from behind the flowering shrub and walked down to the police, where his snapshot of the major was developed and enlarged, in time for a copy to be dispatched to the Yard in the evening, together with a pressing request for further particulars as to the officer in question.

Carter was next met in Pointer's quiet room at a Meublé near the station. The detective officer had no directions to give the Canadian, but asked a good many questions about Robert's letters, and to the answers he paid the closest attention. That done, he took his departure by the afternoon express. He got out at Marseilles, where he waited for Watts to join him. That detective had been instructed by telegram to leave Mr. Beale to the sole care of his mate and join the Chief Inspector at the noisy, dirty port as soon as possible. Watts was only too glad to descend from the crowded train and make his way to the hotel, where Pointer gave him an account of the past day's work.

"I don't want amateur help!" Pointer examined some bouillabaisse with quite undeserved suspicion. "Carter, even supposing he were free from suspicion—which he isn't—may be a useful chap, or may be an absolute bungler. I haven't time to train budding talent in this case."

"And the young lady?"

"Is staying at Cannes. She's very keen to help, and I don't say that she may not be useful, too; but give me the real thing, Watts. Had I been able to get a good woman-detective into the villa in her place, a good many doubts as to the character of Mrs. Erskine's 'bodyguard' might be over. However, I couldn't."

Two nights later a loud ringing and banging on the door of the villa disturbed the occupants just after they had separated for the night. It was quite late, for they had all been to a theatre and supper party. A postman stood at the door. Could he see Madame Erskine about a cable which had come, marked "Urgent," and which he was not sure was meant for her, as beyond the name there was no address.

Mrs. Erskine, whose bedroom lights had only been twinkling a short time, put her head over the windowsill and said that she would come down at once. The man was told to enter, and the front door closed.

A figure crouching behind some bushes sprang lightly erect, waited a moment or two, listening intently at a shuttered window—the window into the lower hall—then, lifting a ladder lying buried in the earth, stood it deftly against Mrs. Erskine's window ledge, and was up with the swiftness of a cat. He took off his rubber shoes and left them on the sill. Then he swung himself into the room and looked at the safe. The door stood wide open, the key was in it. In a second the black figure slipped to the bedroom door. Mrs. Erskine had left it locked. He strode back to the safe, took out its key and weighed it carefully, though swiftly, on a little balance. Followed several quick measurements taken with a sort of dialed spanner, after which four impressions had to be made in boxes containing the special Foch compound. Balance, spanner, and boxes were returned to a little black bag the man wore strapped to his waist. This done with the utmost but unflurried haste, the key was replaced in the safe, and the figure vanished the way it had come. The ladder was laid on the grass for a moment, till the ground under the window had been smoothed with a rake-head, also produced from the bag. In another minute ladder and man seemed to melt, rather than to pass, through the gate.

The telegram was not for Mrs. Erskine after all, as a glance at its obviously business contents told her. It took some time to make this clear to the postman, who was an "extra," and spoke with an atrocious Basque accent—acquired during the retreat from Mons, when Watts' company had got inextricably entangled with some of the blue Berets. Finally the postman grasped the truth, apologized, and "returned to the post office to make further inquiries." These seemed to lead him to a small hotel in a back street, after a change of toilet in the nearest dark doorway, which included turning his coat inside out, ripping off some narrow red braid from each trouser leg, and substituting one cap for another. That done, Watts went to bed, to speculate with some curiosity on exactly what had taken place in the villa during the colloquy in the central hall. He knew better than to ask his superior, and finally consoled himself with the thought that he would doubtless hear of it some day under "From information which has just come to hand."