Читать книгу Chief Inspector Pointer's Cases - 12 Golden Age Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding - Страница 22

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POINTER found the summer house still quite deserted when he returned to it to continue his investigations.

Around where the boughs lay heaped, the flags looked darker than on the other side of the house. Examining them, he saw that this was due to the red tint of the mortar in this one place.

He pried a bit loose. From a phial he dropped a little ammonia on to it. The colour did not change. It was blood, and fresh blood. But such a rain as that of last night would have lashed the bloodmarks off wood, let alone cement. So these, too, must have been made after that short, fierce storm. Yet the tiles here were as clean as elsewhere. There was but one explanation. The tiles had been wiped, but in the deeper cracks of the mortar the blood had remained.

He pushed open an arched, ornamental door that had no lock. Behind it he found a mass of broken geraniums and pots.

The damage was recent, not more than twenty-four hours old.

All around the house, except on the side that interested him, the side below the smudged balustrade, were similar pots set close in against the walls and outlining the paths to the four doors.

Behind another door Pointer found a bag labelled Fertiliser, and some gardener's tools. Out of an iron stove in the middle he fished a piece of sacking that had been used as a floor-cloth. It was smeared with blood, and spots of what he first took to be earth, but which he found differed from the earth around. Then he guessed it, rightly, to be fertiliser spilled in the afternoon by the gardeners, a little of which had got blown against the house in between the pots, and so escaped the downpour.

Pointer stared at the sacking. It was soaked with blood. But whose blood?

Not Rose Charteris's. There was far too much here for that. Besides, this had taken place after the rain. Nothing is more misleading as to the amount of damage done than bloodstains. But even so, this must have been a formidable affair.

Besides the sacking, he found a mass of what might be the remains of six or seven more flower pots, but so ground to powder were they, so trampled the plants, that it was impossible to count them. They told one thing plainly. The paving outside had been washed. Not so these broken remnants. They were soaked with blood, trampled into it.

He cut away a corner of the sacking and dropped it into an indiarubber envelope. He added to his bag a couple of lengths of cord, very stout, and of a kind new to him in colour and texture.

He heard steps on the gravel path. He had replaced everything as he went along, and now lit his pipe and waited.

It was Bennet, the under-gardener, and a boy wheeling a barrow. They began to collect the branches.

"You prune so late?" Brown pointed to the almost stripped thorn.

"The master he thinks the trees at the doors want thinning. Done it before we got to work this morning." Bennet gave a wrathful sniff.

"Must have lost his head over that terrible accident," Brown mused aloud. "I'm staying with Mr. Thornton at his cottage. Colour-printing is my trade. His niece's death must have upset the old gentleman."

"It couldn't upset him beforehand," retorted the gardener. "Not beforehand! And I must say he made thorough job of it all right. Killed the old tree, that's what he's done. Murdered it! And then fell off the ladder on top of them pelargoniums. Collected them in a lump just on purpose, he says, so as not to damage 'em. And then went down bang on top of the lot. Nose bled; too, he says. I don't wonder. Next time he'll leave it to those as understands the job, let's hope."

"Fond of gardening, is he?" Brown struck in wheezily "That's like me. I like to do a bit that way myself."

"Fond? Not beyond seeing as there isn't a stray leaf, and that the flowers come up to time. They mustn't be late for parade, or he wants to know the reason why." Bennet began to help the boy to pick up the broken pots inside. "Just look at 'em." The gardener was almost in tears. "I think he's going dotty, lately, that's my opinion. I wouldn't stay on, not if he asked me."

"Leaving, eh? The colonel hard to please?"

Bennet straightened himself with some difficulty.

"I was fourth gardener at Welbeck," he said with dignity, "and I take it there's nothing in my work I aren't up to. No, he gave me notice out of temper. Pure bad temper."

"Because some of the flowers didn't come up to time?" Brown asked, with the tactlessness of the dull.

Bennet's eyes snapped.

"I've told you once already that I know my job, thank you. The colonel gave me notice because he lost a telegram, or a letter. He called it first one, then the other. Couldn't find it, and said it must have blown out of the window. I'm not a betting man. I'm not interested in tips. He would have it that I'd picked it up. I was marking out some plots in front of his study. Later on, next day it was, the thing turned up. Daresay he still was able to put his bit on. Anyway he was ashamed of himself. I will do him that justice. He apologised quite handsome. But I'm leaving at the end of the month. He's getting too peppery lately. There's no pleasing him. He'll order a thing one day and change it the next. Look at this place. Yet just before he drove off he says that he wants nothing more done here till further orders. Told me not to cart away the broken pots. But I knows him and his little ways by now. This time to-morrow he'll be raving because the rubbish has been left here."

"Mr. Thornton'll miss your good lady. When do you leave?"

"Four weeks from this last Wednesday. I don't say that if—"

Bennet was interrupted. He was wanted down on the grass courts immediately. The colonel had left an order that they were to be prepared for returfing, and it was a case of all hands on deck.

"There!" Bennet handed Brown back his tobacco pouch. "Thank 'ee. Those courts was new sown last week. Mr. Cutbush won't stand much more of this. He'll be leaving next."

Bennet hurried away.

Pointer mounted a short flight of stairs inside the house to the landing where two doors opened, one on either side. He found both to be prettily furnished bedrooms, and guessed them to be used at times as an overflow from Stillwater House.

The left room he only glanced at. The right room detained him longer. Some one had lain on the bed last night. There were the marks of dusty boots on the flowered coverlid, and still an impress in the crumpled pillows. He was a tall man and very light, Pointer decided. His walking had been done before the rain. "Before the rain" had come to mean to him by now "before the murder of Rose Charteris."

One of the lace blinds that covered half the window was on the floor. He found that it was liable to come off at a touch. The window looked out over that side of the tiled surround where Rose must have fallen. On testing it, the pear-shaped window latch gave a nearly perfect print of a thumb and first finger. A long, slender finger which had never been calloused by toil.

It was not Mr. Thornton's first finger and thumb. Pointer had prints of those already from the back of a prepared notebook that he had handed his host to hold for a second. He examined the ground around the summer house while apparently looking for a dropped pencil. He found no marks, except once that same hard-tyred wheel mark which he had seen before on the short cut.

He thought of Mr. Thornton's cottage, which lay quite close.

Opening the gate into the lane beside it, he looked around him. From that gate to where the lane turned into the high road to London, Pointer saw the marks where a light little car had run up and down many times about three this morning, judging by the depth of the half-dried earth. He decided that this case was going to be a shining example of how favoured detectives are in the British Isles in the matter of damp. Seldom indeed is the ground not able, and willing, to date some event for the investigator. He often maintained that the work of his confrères in really good climates must be much more arduous.

The little car had apparently been used as a shuttle. Four times it had run out to the main road and back to the gates close beside Mr. Thornton's cottage. It had been going light and had been driven very slowly. One might have thought that someone was waiting? But why not wait patiently? Why patrol that one little part of the lane, now as close as possible to the Stillwater hedges, now as close as possible to the other side?

Pointer, deep in thought, entered the grounds again, and decided to have a look at the two garages.

The colonel's chauffeur was busy at work, but Brown asked for a little petrol to take a stain out of his coat. He used his eyes while he sponged. Then he went on to Red Gates. Thornton's two-seater was out, but a big Bently saloon was there. Pointer lit one of the lamps, as well as the electric light, and began his examination.

The car had been lately and hastily cleaned. It certainly had been out very recently, and as certainly after, not in, or before, last night's storm. The wheel-discs still held marks of wet splashings, but the mud was of a fairly thick consistency. The door handles and steering wheel yielded no finger prints.

The criss-cross markings of the clutch showed sand, and a few particles of what, fished out with a pin on to white paper, showed under his magnifying glass as crushed flower-pot dust.

Caught in the clutch was a wisp of thin, black silk material. Pointer laid that away in an envelope. So a woman had driven the car!

The inside of the saloon had been swept out, also very hastily. He found more sand, and more flower-pot crumbs in the corners under the seats. There, too, far back, he found a pencil, not much used, with a protective metal tip. It was a French make.

He found the oddest thing last of all.

Two marks like little horse shoes, side by side, showed on the gray cloth upholstery. One pair at the top of the window, but a little to one side. One pair was overhead.

Pointer studied them They were reddish brown in colour. He decided that they had been made by a pair of men's boot heels. The stains showed under his magnifying glass to be of the same horrible blood and fertilise mixture which he had found on the sacking, and which he believed he had found on the swab taken from the cut on Rose's head.

The two marks were close together each time, all but touching. That told its own tale. The man's feet had been bound—lashed together. His hands must also have been tied, or those convulsive efforts to free himself, to kick open a window, or the carriage top, of which the marks told, would have been accompanied by some torn cushions. But their very cording was intact. Down by the door he found a few bloodstains, very small, but still damp. Judging by the height of the heel marks, a man of about the same size as the man who had lain on that bed in the summer house had been carried in this car last night.

Pointer felt his pulses quicken. His intelligence rose to meet the puzzle like a good horse at a stiff fence. But for the moment he reined it back. He thought of that to-and-fro driving of the little car in the lane outside. Suppose that a large car, such a car as this, had passed out first along the lane, and then suppose that the little car, such a car as he had seen in the Colonel's garage a few, minutes ago, and of which he had the particulars in his notebook—suppose this little car had taken up the work of destroying the marks made by the large car in the soft earth?

Yes. Pointer decided to suppose just that.

When Thornton drove back to Red Gates, he found that obvious failure in life, his colour-printer, waiting on his doorstep with a wilting bunch of primroses in his hand.

Pointer followed him into the cottage, and at the suggestion in the other's rheumy eyes, Thornton closed the window.

"Now, sir, there are many things I haven't had time to ask you yet. How did Miss Charteris come to be living with her uncle?"

Thornton explained that the colonel being poor, and the professor wealthy, the latter had taken over a wing of his brother-in-law's house, and helped materially with the expenses. That had been going on for some years now, and seemed to work excellently. He himself was a friend of the professor's, and had taken Red Gates because of that.

Pointer went back to yesterday, the last day of Rose's short life, and had Thornton run the events over to him as far as he knew them. The evening's alarm interested the detective-officer especially.

"Then, as I understand it, sir, all you four gentlemen were playing cards from nine to close on twelve?" Thornton nodded.

"Whist or bridge, I suppose?"

"Mahjong parts of the time, and bridge the rest of the evening."

"Could you give me an idea of how long the mahjong lasted. You see, I like to get even the smallest details clear in my mind, especially as far as time goes, then, when new facts come in, I can place them where they belong."'

Again Thornton nodded.

"Mahjong was over by a little before ten. It struck the hour as we got out the cards."

"And there were absolutely no other visitors except one lady at Stillwater House yesterday?"

"I don't see how there could have been, unless they were fasting experts. I saw nobody at meal times.

"Has this Lady Maxwell been down here before?"

"To Stillwater House? Not as long as I've been here; that's nearly six months now."

"Do you know her at all?"

Thornton gave his rather sardonic smile.

"Oh lor', yes! She's a widow of some worthy baronet or other. Quite well known. Absolutely no good an object of suspicion, I should say, Chief Inspector."

Pointer looked hard at his boot-tips.

"Brown, if you please, sir. Even when the house is empty as now. I suppose you haven't noticed any change at Stillwater House lately—no one has seemed to act in any way differently from usual? Colonel Scarlett, for instance, to take him first?"

Thornton looked uneasy. He adjusted his glasses

"It's rather an unpleasant feeling, being asked anything so important as that I mean, a mistaken impression on my part might lead to such unforeseen consequences—"

"Not so bad as that," Pointer comforted him with some inward amusement. He never took any one's evidence quite so seriously as they did themselves. But that was a secret between himself and his Maker.

"And it's a most unpleasant thing to do. Report on a man who's a friend, in a way, and my host—in a way."

"There's only one thing to be done in an affair of this kind," Pointer said in his pleasant voice, "and that is to sink personal feelings altogether. Just act as a sort of gramophone disc. Just record the impressions made on you. In every walk in life one has to put one loyalty against another, hasn't one? Loyalty to justice seems to me to be high enough to serve, even at the cost of a great deal of discomfort."

"Then I should say that Colonel Scarlett has seemed to have something on his mind for about a month or more back—at least, that's my impression. The day before yesterday, Wednesday, he certainly got a letter that disturbed him greatly, though he tried not to show it."

"Exactly what happened?"

Again Thornton hesitated.

"You never know what trifle may not help," Pointer prompted, "and very often it throws a light on some other person or event, far away from the thing you're talking about."

"I suppose that's so. Well, a letter was brought in while we were in the lounge, just before lunch. The colonel gave a start as soon as he saw the envelope, went to the window, and tore it open. When he turned around again, he looked very odd. As a man might look who had learnt suddenly that something on which he confidently counted had gone all wrong."

"Did he speak about the letter at all?"

"Not when I was present. He excused himself, and didn't see him again till Thursday at lunch."

"He wasn't back to dinner, then? Were you alone with him in the lounge when the letter was brought him?"

Thornton said that he had been.

"He's a racing man, I believe. Heavy backer?"

"I believe so, but as I never backed a horse in my life he doesn't discuss those interests with me."

"Was it dark down here last Wednesday at noon? mean, was the lounge so gloomy that the colonel couldn't have read his letter where he sat?"

"It was a particularly bright day."

"Did you happen to notice the letter at all, or it's envelope?"

Thornton had not. It was only the results that had struck him.

"Now about Mr. Bond and Mr. Cockburn, they're friends of the colonel, I believe?"

Thornton nodded.

"Yet you put them up?"

"I was very much surprised. And so were they," he added with a faint smile. "As a rule, Stillwater House is a sort of hotel."

"Possibly this change in the colonel you noticed may have meant rather a pinch—money-pinch?"

"I shouldn't have thought," Thornton balanced a Persian tile on his finger, "I shouldn't have thought that Bond and Co. could have made much of a hole in his finances in one breakfast. An apple and a biscuit is their usual way of beginning the day, I believe. Always training for something or other."

"And the colonel on Thursday evening, did he seem like a man who had another engagement still ahead of him? Was it he who suggested stopping the cards?"

"No. I'm afraid my yawns did that."

"Do you think that shot in the lane surprised the colonel?" Pointer asked suddenly, and Thornton felt more respect for him. Possibly the man was not quite such a fool as he looked in his rigout. Possibly.

"I think it did," Thornton said, "but I had an idea—just a fancy—that he connected it with something in some way. I mean—it's hard to explain—I think it suggested something more to him than to the rest of us."

Pointer absorbed that for some seconds.

"I asked you just now about the other visitors at the house. But perhaps the colonel might arrange to put up some acquaintance in Medchester, or in one of his cottages? Say it was a business matter?"

Thornton nodded carelessly.

"Doubtless."

"How about that house by the lake? Some one came out of it just now."

"The Lookout, as it's called? As far as I know, it's empty. It's generally only used when Stillwater's full."

"Yet the colonel didn't suggest it for Mr. Cockburn or Mr. Bond," mused Pointer. "It's a trivial point doubtless. Is he on good terms with them both?"

"He doesn't know them well enough not to be." Thornton's smile was faintly ironical. "They're the merest club acquaintances of his. They came down to see the professor."

But Pointer was only using the two known guests as a stalking-horse for the unknown man. Unless Mr. Thornton was a good actor, he knew nothing of that visitor. But Mr. Thornton had been quite a star in the O.U.D.S fairly recently.

"You realise, of course, how important it is to make sure that no unchecked-off visitor, or stranger, was near Stillwater last night or early this morning?" Point explained.

Thornton's legs were crossed. The swinging foot gave a sharp jerk. He uncrossed them.

"Quite so," he said evenly. "I quite realise that."

"Now the ladies, were they on good terms with Miss Charteris, would you say?"

"Excellent." The reassuring word seemed to come out from force of habit. "I mean, as far as I know," Thornton ended lamely.

"Just so. What dresses were they wearing yesterday at dinner?"

"Surely you don't suspect any of them of being concerned in this ghastly affair?" Thornton asked, with one of his quickly-veiled glances.

Pointer did not reply.

"Mrs. Lane was all in pearl gray, as usual, a sort of misty, lacey frock. Lady Maxwell wore a navy dress. Miss Charteris was in peach colour, with silver bits on it here and there. Rather a gorgeous affair. Miss Scarlett was in something dark, brown or black, I forget which."

Pointer next asked whether Thornton could give him Lady Maxwell's home address. She had left Stillwater the first thing in the morning, so he had learnt from his couple of minutes' gossip with Wilkins the chauffeur.

Thornton told him that she practically lived at Batt's Hotel in London, and Pointer, thanking him, slouched off.

Once more he searched the lane, but he found nothing that could explain the shot heard last night. He had no time, however, to waste in hunting for what possibly did not concern the case at all, when the things that did concern it were so numerous and so baffling.

His first aim was, if possible, to stop valuable records from being lost. Nothing had been burnt in the iron stove of the summer house. Stillwater House had central heating, and gas stoves. Yet Pointer felt sure that the body of Rose Charteris must have been covered when it was trundled along in the dark. She was a tall girl. He looked to find something of about six feet in length A blanket, or a curtain possibly. Then, too, whoever had wiped those flags, might well have left some marks on their clothes. He had looked over the empty bedrooms of the lady housekeeper and the master of Stillwater. He had found nothing suspicious in either. Mrs. Lane's gray lace frock was immaculate. He decided to try once more, and see whether Sibella were still in her bedroom.

As he passed up a back stair leading from the library he heard some one moving about in Rose's sitting-room. Cautiously, noiselessly, he set the door ajar.

It moved without a sound of latch or hinges, as he had already noted.

Pacing up and down was a girl with straight black hair drawn smoothly back from a pale, narrow face. He guessed her rightly to be Sibella Scarlett. Finally with a little resolute squaring of her shoulders, she walked towards the door that led into Rose's bedroom.

That bedroom, where, in the darkness, a girl's body lay waiting to be consigned to deeper darkness yet—never to see the light again. Had the living cousin part or knowledge of the dead cousin's fate? Was it through any act of hers that—terrible thought—the flowers heaped around the bed were fading merely because of what lay in their midst, were withered by one touch of that skin, so cold, so white, still so fair?

Sibella walked decisively enough towards the door, after that curious little shake of herself, but with her fingers on the knob she stopped abruptly. Had Pointer been a believer in apparitions, he would have thought that she stopped by something which she could see only too well invisible though it might be to him. For a second she struggled hard to throw off whatever banned her. She did not succeed. Turning, she almost ran to an arm chair and sank into it. She was out of Pointer's range of vision but after a few minutes he saw her again. Walking with a lagging step, a picture of something more than grief or depression, with compressed lips she passed on out and down the main stairs.

A minute later and Pointer came up from the staircase where he had retired and glanced over her bedroom. A black evening frock hung in her wardrobe. He ran it through his fingers. It was unstained. Then he bent over her shoes. From the buckle of a pair of black satin slippers he shook out quite a teaspoonful of soft garden mould. Dry mould. Not the dark fertiliser of the summer house. This was plain earth, but of a light kind. There were no stains on the soles and no particles of sand. He replaced them, and drove in his battered car to Medchester station, where, as he expected, he found the most deserted telephone booth in the town. Over the wire he explained himself to Paul, and said that he had had an accident with a tablecloth of Mr. Thornton's. What was the name of the cleaners employed by Stillwater House? Paul gave him an address in the High Street. Pointer telephoned there at once. No. No parcel had been left from Stillwater this morning.

Next he got the number of New Scotland Yard, and was soon speaking to Detective-Inspector Watts. He directed that officer, in code, to have a look at any evening frocks of a Lady Maxwell, who was staying presumably at Batt's Hotel. He was particularly to notice a navy dress. Should any of them not be in perfect condition, Watts was to bring the garment in question down himself on a motor bicycle.

Pointer gave him the number of Red Gates, and went there to await the report.

He hunted up Thornton again on his return, and found that gifted author drawing Persian scrolls and leaves on his blotter, a pile of untouched paper beside him.

This time it was Medchester's evening entertainment that seemed to interest the detective.

So Miss Scarlett had driven Mrs. Lane off to the concert in the little two-seater that really belonged to Miss Charteris, but which either of the girls, or, at a pinch, Mrs. Lane, used.

"They can all drive, then?"

"Most women can nowadays," Thornton said easily.

"Yes, but how?" Pointer replied. "I don't suppose the colonel ever lets them take out that big car of his?"

There was no reply.

Pointer drifted out of the room again. He felt that Thornton was not a man in front of whom to drop a card and expect him to be unaware of its suit.

Half an hour later the telephone bell rang. Mr. Brown was wanted by a friend. The friend went on to say that he had found one of the books rather dog-eared, and was bringing it down for him to look at. He might, or might not, want it.

Pointer rang off and made his way to the handsome old inn in Medchester Main Street. Smoking in front of the entrance, he was hailed by a motor cyclist, who waved a kit-bag at him and followed his slow steps up to a bedroom that Brown had just engaged.

There Watts spread out a dark blue silk dress with velvet embossed flowers in high relief. It was one of those modern affairs that can be drawn through a napkin ring and looked rather as though some one had tried that experiment on it quite recently.

"Hotel sneak-thieves must get their living easy," Watts said, standing back. "Lady Maxwell was out, so was her maid. I found this in a package done up as though for the cleaners. I put something else in instead. What do you think of it, sir?"

Pointer was running the soft material through his fingers. He could find no stains, but he felt several stiff places. Turning up the electric light, they showed as purple splotches.

He dropped a little guaiacum solution, and then a few drops of peroxide on one place. Up rose at once a bead of a beautiful bright blue.

"The stiff places are blood right enough." Watts folded up the dress again.

"Humph!" Pointer said, and decided to keep the frock for the moment.

It was late in the afternoon when he drove up to a house in Bayswater, where he shared rooms with a bookbinder friend. O'Connor was his one real confidant, for the Irishman had done some first-class work as a secret service agent during the war, and Pointer could rely on his discretion. Just now he wanted to rely on more than that.

O'Connor had a collection of pencils and inks unrivalled even by Scotland Yard. The pencil that Pointer had found in Thornton's car puzzled him. It made only a thick, oily smear when tried on paper, yet it had evidently been used about one-third down.

O'Connor tried it on his thumb.

"It marks all right like that," Pointer said, "but it's a kind I've never met before."

"I have." O'Connor went to a Wellington cabinet. He turned the Chubb lock, and after a minute laid before his friend another pencil.

"Try that, and see if it isn't the same kind."

It behaved in exactly the same way. The name, Cos tallied.

"What sort of thing is it?" Pointer asked curiously.

"Writes on skin. French surgeons use them a good deal, I believe, to explain to their students just what they're going to do before they cut up a patient. I had a case during the war of a boy with a message written or his back with one of these. That's how I recognised it. And what's the meaning of your blowing in with this implement when you're on your leave?"

"If you care to come down with me in my car to a town called Medchester, I'll spin you a yarn. It's a hop, skip and jump affair, or I would wait and have supper here. Just let me send off some telephone messages first."

O'Connor doubled his long legs in beside his friend and Pointer drove off for the Barnet road.

He gave the other a brief summary of the facts as they sped along. When he got to the marks on the green balustrade of the summer house, O'Connor struck. "You think she was killed there? Flung off the top of that lookout?"

Pointer nodded "I do."

"Was she as lovely as the papers make out?" the Irish man asked irrelevantly.

Pointer slowed up for a second and handed him a photograph that he had annexed. O'Connor stared at it.

There is something infinitely touching in beauty, in spite of all that saw or tale may say of its deceitful quality, the heart knows better. Knows the contrary.

Knows that here before it is Truth, is Abiding Reality. Is a message faint and dim, which the soul has managed to get through to mind, or body, or character—rarely to all three—and of which we see but the blurred record.

O'Connor handed back the portrait without a comment. He looked moved.

"Glad it's you! You'll get him yet, or her! But what beats me is why was the body moved? Sure it was a perfectly good accident. She just overbalanced herself. I call it a capital murder. Why botch it by taking her off to the sand-pit? It looks inexplicable, it does that—so far as you've told me the story."

"And so far as I know the story. I found the carrier later on which she was moved. It's practically a shed door mounted on a pair of old-fashioned bicycle wheels. A man pushed it, a woman walked behind, steadying it."

"A woman! It must be a woman in a million to stand in with such a crime! And where's the motive?" demanded O'Connor, as though Pointer had it in his pocket. "Jealousy, of course," he assured himself, "though it's a bit carefully worked out for that. Yet that might depend on the man—" His voice faded off into thought.

"Now, Jim," Pointer said briskly, "that's the end of the links that fit together, even though poorly. Here comes a jumble of odd bits. And odd, they are!"

He told of the blood in between the wiped tiles of the broken flower-pots.

"A fearful struggle must have taken place on that same side of the summer house last night. But what sort of a struggle? The plants aren't trodden into the earth, except a few found stuffed into the stove. The rest were broken off horizontally. A lasso? It's a fantastic thought, but so's the nature of the damage done. You'd expect a powerful snake to leave traces like that, supposing some one had tried to capture it."

O'Connor sat rigid.

"Another tragedy, or attempted tragedy?" he asked finally.

Pointer pursed his lips.

"You think it was the murderer and the girl herself?" O'Connor asked under his breath. "Sure that would be a terrible thought! A lovely young thing like that, struggling for her life within a stone's throw of home, and help and then losing it."

"I don't believe it happened that way." Pointer looked far ahead of him. "Apart from anything else, I can't think her face would look as peaceful as it does, if death hadn't been instantaneous. The doctors will tell us that at the inquest for certain, of course, but I think she was looking up at the sky when the end came. I'm sure I hope so. For bear in mind that the girl hasn't a scratch on face or hands, except such as would be made by the branches of a tree on one wrist, nor her frock a crumple bar that cut-out place. But none the less, the fact remains that an awful tussle of some sort went on close to where she fell."

"Could the struggle have come first, and she got away, rushed up those outside stairs you spoke of, got to the top, and then been flung over by whoever was after her?" O'Connor was intensely interested.

"Then why didn't she cry out?" Pointer asked. "If it was some one else, why didn't they shout for help? The damage looks as though done by men. Footprints, as we mean the word, there are none, but still... Now, as I see it, this is a sort of side-show, for it took place after the murder, but it evidently occupies some vital place in the mystery, or why is nothing known about the man or his fate. To my mind, he is in all probability connected with a letter that the colonel received at lunch on Wednesday, and thought afterwards had blown out of his study window, and been picked up by the under-gardener. Thornton spoke of the colonel's marked discomposure when he read it. Suppose that letter, which so upset him, was to say that some one, some enemy likely, was coming on to see him. Perhaps it was a friend's warning. No post gets in at that time. I take it it was sent by hand, though I haven't been able to find out yet. Perhaps it was written by the man himself. At any rate, let's say that Scarlett expects him some evening soon, which is why he makes no move to put up any visitors, and, as I've learnt from Maud, Miss Charteris's maid, was exceedingly annoyed that Lady Maxwell was asked down by his niece for over the week-end. I think he expected some one. And those marks on the flagging rather suggest that he made his arrangements accordingly."

"Big man, I suppose, the colonel?" O'Connor asked.

"Fair. Bit overweighted, but quite powerful in an emergency. Now as to the unknown himself, the murderer or another victim, I can't see yet which he stands for. He lies down on the bed. Apparently till a certain time, or till a signal is given."

"Ah ha! That shot!" breathed O'Connor.

"Seems so. Still, that lying down is odd. As far as time goes, he could have been the murderer all right. But in that case—" Pointer gave a short impatient movement to his head, like a horse tossing his bit.

"The bits of cord you found pointed to binding," O'Connor said thoughtfully, "probably to gagging also. Was the man gagged immediately he stepped out of the summer house, was he bound, nearly got free from his bonds and fought on a losing battle, unable to call for help?"

"I doubt if any gagged man could have put up such fight. Besides, if he could have struggled like that, he could have loosened the gag. And then, what about the lateral break of so many of the plants. You asked why the girl was moved." Pointer drove on in silence for minute. "Well, there's only one easy guess, so doubtless it's the wrong one. But one might think that the murderer was seen by the man in the summer house. Knew that he had been seen. Moved the body of that poor child to the sandpit just in case—and carried off the man."

"How?" asked O'Connor.

"He was driven off in Thornton's large car."

"By Thornton?"

"Ah, if I knew that! But I don't, yet. All I know so far is that the man was taken away in that car of his bound, and presumably gagged."

"And how does the pencil come in?"

Pointer told him where he had found it. "I think it dropped from some medical man's pocket as he stooped to lift out the man, on his arrival."

"That's why you set your myrmidons on to investigating last night's arrivals at all the hospitals and nursing homes of London before we left?"

Pointer nodded.

"Why not try mortuaries?" O'Connor asked.

Pointer only shook his head.

"Unless he were already dead," mused the Irishman, "that cord looks as though the man was not to be killed outright. Why? Pity? Hardly. Something which he knew, and was to be made to tell?"

"Ah," Pointer nodded, "now you're making for the same place as I am. Something, possibly, for which he's to be nursed back to life in secret. And that's as far as I've got yet. And here's as far as you get, Jim. An up-train's due in ten minutes. So long." And Pointer unceremoniously dropped his friend, at Medchester railway station.

It was midnight when he slipped out of Red Gates and up to the big house again. He expected to find work enough there to last him till morning.

At first sight it would seem likely that Rose Charteris's murder was some act of mad jealousy. But the reason might be much more obscure. The motive might not have spent itself with her violent death. On the contrary, it might still be existing, still operating.

He set to work on Colonel Scarlett's study. He had looked through Rose's papers earlier in the day. They had given, him no clue to her death. But they had brought out one strange fact. There was not, one scrap of her father's writing among them. Pointer found the same odd circumstance duplicated here. Yet Professor Charteris had been gone from the place some ten days now. From a Sphere, however, lying on an under-shelf of a wicket table in the hall, he shook out a registered envelope addressed to Miss Charteris in the same intricate hand which had marked some of the professor's books in the library with his name and comments.

The envelope, a long linen one, bore an Italian stamp, and the postmark Bolzano, Italy. The date was that of last Monday. On the back, in accordance with foreign regulations for registration, was the name of the sender A. Charteris, Hotel Laurin, Bolzano, Alto Adige. It had been sealed with red wax, and was empty, save for some dots, which proved to be black sealing-wax under his glass.

Apparently that envelope was the only communication from the professor that Stillwater contained.

That meant something.

Pointer was about to return to the study when he hear a slight clink on the gravel outside.

Some one was trying the windows. Now Pointer had left one ajar in case of need. He slipped behind a leather draught-curtain and watched.

Cautiously the window was opened, and a slim figure entered. Another followed.

"What do we do first?" whispered a voice nervously.

"Stub our toes," came in an aggrieved snap. "Flash the torch, Co., for a minute."

"Seems all right," the holder of the torch said again "I'll venture to turn on the light."

Pointer saw the first man move to the mantel-piece. "There's none here now," he said in a disappointed voice.

"Let me look, Bond." The other strode across. "There may be some in a drawer, but I'll reconnoitre before we start a hunt."

And Cockburn, with an acumen which Pointer grudged him, very sensibly decided to begin his investigations with the thick curtain on its leather rings.

Pointer immediately stepped out, an antiquated Colt in his wobbly hand.

"Not another step, either of you! I'm a peaceable man, I am, but not another step, if you please!"

Pointer's accents were those of a nervous man screwing himself up by sheer resolution.

"What in the name of—here! Dash it all! Leave that bell alone, whoever you are!" Bond called in a ringing whisper.

"I'm a peaceable man," quavered the voice, "but I intend to do my duty. Now, not a move from either of you, or I'll fire all six balls off at once."

"Good God!" Bond gave a half-amused, half angry snort, "are you the village constable making a night of it?"

"Never you mind who I am! I'm a respectable man, as I can prove."

A second time a reddened finger made for the bell, push, and just missed it.

"Take your hand away from that dashed bell!" Bond fairly hissed. "Look here! We're friends of the people in this house, but who are you?"

"I'm doing a bit of work for Mr. Thornton of Red Gates cottage," Brown jerked his head towards the library behind him, "but what I want to know, is—"

"Look here, Bond. Let's walk across to Thornton's cottage. If he vouches for us, will that content you?" Cockburn turned towards the blinking figure facing him. That worthy evidently considered the proposition from every point of view.

"Well, I'm sure I don't want to overstep my place. Seeing you two come in like that... but, of course, if Mr. Thornton O.K.'s you I've nothing more to say. But take hands, please, and walk straight in front of me. I'm a peaceable man, I am, but—"

"Oh, shut up!" Bond's patience snapped. "And for Heaven's sake don't let off those six bullets the first time you trip."

At Red Gates Mr. Brown made them precede him to the back of the house, where a light shone reflected on the hedge of holly. Mr. Thornton sat at his writing-table, but he seemed to be paying more attention to Scotch whisky than Persian art, for the moment.

"Look here, Thornton," Bond called in softly through the open window, "do you mind asking your blood-thirsty friend behind us not to shoot us at sight, as he's inclined to?"

"Just assure him that we're not professional burglars, there's a good chap," Cockburn added.

Thornton set his tumbler down hastily.

"Why, it's Mr. Bond and Mr. Cockburn, Chief Inspector. These gentlemen are from the Foreign Office they—"

"Chief Inspector? Where?" Bond turned swiftly and gazed past the awkward figure with the pistol in his hand. Seeing nothing, he stared hard at his captor.

"You mean—oh, good egg!"

"C.I.D.!" came from Cockburn in tones of rapture.

"Oh, Lord, that's torn it!" Thornton smote his breast as Pointer, gazing at him more in sorrow than in anger closed the window, and drew down the blinds.

"I apologise for the slip in forty different positions, but the surprise—"

"Amateurs will be amateurs, sir." Pointer dropped lightly into a chair. "But I must request that it be forgotten at once by everybody concerned."

"Then we were right! And she was murdered!" Cockburn came back to the meaning of the dingy man's presence in front of them. "I caught sight of her first, you know," he explained to Pointer. "I can't, seem to get the memory of it out of my mind." His voice was husky.

Pointer immediately asked for an account of the findings of the body and of last night's alarm. He asked a few fresh questions, and sat listening intently.

"And you chose the colonel's study to-night, just why?" he asked finally.

Cockburn took out an envelope, and from it two bloodied bits of cord. Evidently some of the same cord Pointer had found in the stove of the summer house.

"After the superintendent turned us down, we had one more go, at the place by the sand-pit," Bond cut in, "before we went back to town. And we came on these under the copse. Now, my father makes ropes. That cord is Indian. I happened to comment on the same stuff lying on the colonel's study mantelpiece yesterday. He said that it had come around a consignment of Bengal chutney. So when we found it near that sand-pit, and stained like that," he paused and looked up at the ceiling, "well, we thought it was well to come on down and have a look for the rest of it. The chief constable is a friend of ours. Besides, we couldn't get away all yesterday, so we decided not to lose another moment and come at night.

"But Scarlett gave the cord on his mantelpiece to di Monti," Thornton put in.

"Ah!" Cockburn sat up like a terrier that hears a rustle.

"Didn't you see him? The count wanted something to tie up the tennis net at the inn. Said he must remember to get some string. The colonel handed him a coil from the end of his mantelpiece, and di Monti drove away with it in his car."

Bond flushed to the roots of his curly hair.

"And to think that I broke into the colonel's—oh, Lord!" He buried his face in a whisky and soda.

"Di Monti! That's what we came to see about. I mean," Cockburn turned a very, grave face to Pointer, "I mean that our breaking into Stillwater House had nothing to do with any one there. Of course, we know they're all right. But this Italian—I never saw a crueller face. More pitiless. More hopeless to appeal to. If Miss Charteris had angered him in any way—God help her!"

Bond murmured his agreement. Thornton stared at the fire.

"What do you say, Mr. Thornton? You're the man on the spot. Do you feel certain that the inmates of Stillwater House are beyond suspicion? All of them?" Pointer asked in Brown's husky voice. He had not dropped one of the latter's characteristics throughout the interview.

Thornton shot him one of his unreadable glances as shook his head vaguely.

"What was it that made you go over the top?" Bond asked Thornton curiously. He could not imagine Thornton sufficiently stirred to take the initiative in anything.

"Oh, just a vague feeling that I wanted a competent judgment on the whole matter. To settle doubts once and for all. Mr. Brown here is very kindly spending the last days of his leave with me."

"Well, I wish to Heaven that we could be of some use," Cockburn said regretfully. "Isn't there anything we can do, Chief Inspector?"

"Anything?" echoed Cockburn.

Pointer thought a moment. Any light thrown on Rose Charteris's circle was all to the good. But friends of that same circle? Thornton, for one, an actual member of it? And young men who climbed into library windows?

"Are you staying for the rest of the night?" he asked.

Cockburn spoke of the Medchester Arms, but Thornton put his second spare room and a Chesterfield at the disposal of the two. His shed only held his own cars, but, as before, they could run their Buick into the colonel's garage.

"Is your garage always locked, sir?" Brown asked Thornton. "I left a notebook in your car when I came, I'm afraid."

Thornton ran his fingers into his pocket, but his expression betrayed his amusement at Scotland Yard's brilliance.

"Here's the key. Yes, I always keep it locked. Wilkins has a duplicate, if you should leave anything else behind you, and I'm out."

"But what about us?" queried the two friends. "If we can be of any use, we'll do anything."

Brown blinked at them.

"Then suppose, when the postman calls to-morrow at Stillwater House, one or other of you could be on hand and get hold of any letters that come for the colonel. I want them steamed open, the contents copied, and the letters carefully closed to show no signs of—"

"Look here, Chief Inspector, what do you take us for?" Bond broke in stiffly.

"Sweeps?" suggested Cockburn hotly.

"No. Amateur detectives," Pointer said innocently. The two men laughed ruefully.

"I see your point. Considering the prod it's just given us, I may well. So we can't be of any help? Rank outsiders, eh?" Bond was a trifle piqued.

"If you'll come out with me in the morning, and show me where that shot seemed to come from, I should be very grateful," and Pointer arranged for a meeting at eight.

"And now I think I'll get a wink of sleep." He left the three together.

"I hope he's up to the work," Bond said gloomily. "Of course one has to discount the make-up and those frightful clothes, but even so, I'm not impressed with the quality of his brains."

"You don't need brains at the Yard," Cockburn complained. "Their place seems to be generally supplied by something called 'information to hand'. With that—whatever it is—you may do quite well. Without it, you're lost."

And the meeting broke up with a vote of lack of confidence in the man who was apparently looking for the wink of sleep of which he had spoken, among the colonel's chutney cases.

There were two of them below stairs. Neither was corded now.

Next morning Pointer found the three men from the cottage very punctual.

"I was walking somewhere about here," Cockburn waved a hand towards a clump of trees. "The shot came from directly in front of me. But I'm afraid that I can't be more exact as to where I stood at the moment."

"I picked up a matchbox yesterday morning a little to the left of us." Pointer pulled one out of his pocket "Is it by any chance yours? That might settle the place where you were standing when you used it."

It was Cockburn's. He pocketed the little silver slab with thanks. "I dropped it when the shot startled me. So it came from over there." He pointed ahead of him. It was where, much farther off, lay the sand-pit.

Now Thornton had indicated another direction in the account that he had given Pointer. He waved his hand towards it energetically. "Surely you said from over here!"

"And I thought you said this way." Bond took a turn at flapping his arms around The three looked for all the world like signallers at a first practice.

Pointer was used to this sort of thing from amateurs. Bond finally came over to Cockburn's unchanging certainty as to whence the sound had reached him the night before. Thornton, however, was, or appeared to be, unconvinced. But as he had been so certain in talking to the Chief Inspector, he could not be expected to change now, if only to save his face.