Читать книгу Chief Inspector Pointer's Cases - 12 Golden Age Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding - Страница 25

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POINTER had a short talk with Lady Maxwell after the funeral, but he learnt nothing fresh. She repeated her doubts about Mrs. Lane, and the fact that the colonel, when she had felt it her painful duty to speak to him on the point just now, had said that his lady housekeeper was too efficient to lose, and that if there were any mistake, it was his. He must have confused two Mrs. Seymours.

The object of the lady's suspicions was sitting very quietly in the arm-chair into which she had sunk on her return from church.

After a long time spent in thought, she walked down-stairs and into the study. The colonel, too, was sitting staring into space.

On seeing her he rose abruptly, and with a look of caution went to the door and shut it again to make sure that it was caught.

"Does she suspect anything? Lady Maxwell, I mean?" he whispered "Paul's downstairs. Those damned police are off the premises for once. Does she know anything?" he repeated irritably.

"Nothing, I think, except that I was never a companion to a Bishop's widow."

For a second Scarlett stared at her, as though she had spoken in some foreign tongue.

"Oh!" he said at last, "you mean your reference? Well, I had, to say something when the police sprang the question on me. But was that—"

She interrupted him. "I think it would be as well if I were to go to town. I don't see else—there's danger," she said in a low voice.

"Danger of having communications cut off," he finished. "I was just thinking the same when you came in. Have you thought of where to go?"

"You have a furnished house at Victoria standing empty till June. I'll go there as a sort of caretaker." She raised her hand. "Don't let's talk any more about it to-day. I feel as though," she was at the door before he had guessed her intention, "I want to be alone, for a while."

She was gone. The colonel mixed himself a stiff drink.

Pointer found Cockburn's car waiting for him at the police station. It had been waiting some time.

"Bond had to get back to town. He went by train, but I wanted to see you about something. You know that shot I heard, or thought I heard, last Thursday night?" Cockburn began briskly.

Pointer nodded.

"Well, Count di Monti's tyre burst coming back from the funeral. I heard the sound again at that moment. It wasn't a shot after all, but one of his tyres I heard go phut. They're a patent, reinforced, balloon type, of a very curious make."

"You're quite sure of this?"

"I'm prepared to swear to it. Such a sound might travel far on a quiet evening just before a storm. Anyway, that's the noise we heard and mistook for a shot." Cockburn's voice was quite definite.

Pointer turned over his latest addition to the puzzle for a minute.

"You see," he explained—Cockburn was talking to him in his own sitting-room, "the trouble is that Count di Monti has a very good alibi for the hours from eight on Thursday till Friday morning. Prince Cornaro and a Signor del Greco are prepared to swear that he was in their company from dinner till the meeting of Italian Fascisti, which took place at eleven, and afterwards till ten the next morning, or a little after. They're both very definite and very positive. The head waiter at Frasati's bears out the dinner hour as eight. The count most certainly spoke at the meeting. For the rest of the time we have to rely on the honour of the two gentlemen."

Cockburn nodded in his turn. He was listening very seriously. "I quite understand all that. But can't the alibi be tested?"

"I don't mind saying that it's so good it's suspicious."

"That's what I think. Now, Mr. Thornton, it seems, knows a Cavaliere Rossi, the London correspondent, for the best Italian papers. An anti-Fascist. He might be able to tell us something about di Monti and Thursday night."

Pointer heartily commended this idea.

Armed with a letter, and preceded by a telephone message from Thornton to the Cavaliere, Cockburn sped up to the Italian's club.

Rossi turned out to be a tall, good-looking young man with a merry, dark eye. He burnt Thornton's little note in the wood fire.

"Have a cocktail of my family Vermouth while we talk. This corner is absolutely safe from eavesdroppers and, what is more difficult to secure in England, and much more important, from draughts. Now, what do you want me to tell you about di Monti?"

"Oh, all sorts of things. First of all, what is his position here?"

"Slippery. If the Ambassador likes, he can disown him. If he likes, he can throw his mantle over him, and then you won't be able to touch him."

"I can hardly imagine a war over that chap! But which way would his Excellency's preferences run?" Rossi bent forward in mock intensity.

"It depends on how much there is to throw his cloak over. A little heap of political trouble or a great mound of it. It would stretch in the one case, but not in the other. At least, that is how things seem to stand. Di Monti is on a mission, straight from our 'Musoon.' Sent to organise the Italian Fascisti in London. The anti-Communists, that is—."

Cockburn glanced meditatively at his glass.

"The pro-'Italia uber alles', eh?" he asked quietly. Rossi shrugged his shoulders, with a laugh at the mixture of tongues.

"Perhaps! After all, every country sings that song. 'Britannia Rules the Waves' sounds so very like it to some ears, my friend. But to continue—the mission is a sort of test. Cangrande did splendidly with d'Annunzio's Arditi in Fiume."

Cockburn made a face.

"That is as may be, but he did well. Then came that Corfu incident. He was partly responsible for the way that was carried out. So he got into semi-disgrace. Now, as it happens, the dream of his life has always been our colonies. Tripoli, and then this Oltrajuba. He wants to be sent out with a free hand to organise the latter. He may get it—if there is no trouble, no hint of disgrace. But he will not get it if he is mixed up publicly in this story. And it is being decided in the Inner Council at Rome even now."

"Tell me, Cavaliere, do you think the man capable of murder?"

"Are we not all capable of murder? I am."

"No," Cockburn said with conviction. "That is one of our catch phrases, that 'Every man is capable of murder.' In reality, few people are. And here it's a question of a young and frightfully, lovely girl. Not one man in a million would have been willing to harm her."

"I know. I've seen her more than once. Madonna, she was beautiful!"

"Do you think the Count capable of murdering her?" persisted Cockburn.

Rossi looked uncomfortable.

"Jealousy is a fearful poison," he confessed.. "I think we of the south feel it more than you can. With us it is something that can change us altogether until it is past. How can I say he would not fall, where so many men have fallen?"

"Look here, did you see him yourself at the meeting on Thursday?"

"I did. He took the chair from eleven till twelve."

"Well, then, was he late?" Cockburn felt sure that all was not as it should be with that alibi. He was convinced that di Monti was in the events of Thursday night for something.

"Not to speak of. Perhaps half an hour, more or less. You know with us Italians—" The hands finished the sentence, gracefully.

"Did he seem as usual at the meeting?" Cockburn probed. He had discussed with Pointer the best questions to ask.

Rossi thought a while, running his slender hands through his hair.

"In no way—no. He is never a magnetic speaker, but he is reliable and very much in earnest. Last Thursday I thought he seemed rather duller than usual."

"Duller!" Cockburn had not expected this.

"Well, then, put it that his thoughts were somewhere else. He had a colour in his face, and a red light in his eyes that I had never seen in him before."

Cockburn sipped his Vermouth.

"You don't like di Monti?" he asked.

Rossi shook his head.

"I don't. But I've told you only the truth, none the less," he added with a slight smile.

"May I ask you why you don't like him?"

Rossi shrugged.

"Why don't I like him? There is something—what shall I say—sinister?—in the man that repels me. Then, too, his name has been mixed up at home with some very savage punitive expeditions, and you know what that means, when the Fascisti—"

Rossi checked himself here.

"I've told you all I know of the man," he finished.

"Thanks ever. I wish some of your facts had been more discreditable," Cockburn said in a low voice, and Rossi chuckled. "Now, a last favour. Just let me have the address of the friend who took di Monti to his rooms, will you? The name was del Greco."

Rossi was able to give it him, and Cockburn put in an hour's work learning, by a few, very shrewdly-placed questions, from a couple of maids in the flat below, that the rooms upstairs had been empty till after midnight on Thursday.

He felt quite pleased with himself as he walked away, though Pointer could have told him that servants' testimony against a man of di Monti's position was not a sure move.

Pointer meanwhile was up in town, too. He had decided to pay the count's rooms in the Albany a visit himself. Watts had gone over them in vain, but the Chief Inspector thought that he might find some neglected trifle.

The rooms showed more books than Pointer had expected. Besides the inevitable bust of Dante, the Italian tri-colour, and a well-thumbed Carducci, there were books on agriculture, grammars of Tuareg and Arabic dialects, pamphlets on army training, and a host of similar works The only letters were business letters, except a few from his own family in Italy.

At the back of the boot-cupboard he unearthed a little posy of flowers. Some one had set the boots down on the top of the delicate blossoms. Pointer picked them up with a dim sense of cruelty. The touch told him that they were artificial, but they were beautifully copied from nature. A little bunch of pink and white camellias tied with silver ribbon—the shoulder-knot that Rose had been wearing in Bellairs's portrait of her. They had been flung with such force to the back of the cupboard that their stems were doubled up. The petals were worse yet. It looked to him, it certainly looked to him, as though a boot-heel had crunched on them. Accident or intention?

Pointer thought a trifle grimly of the patent anguish with which Count di Monti had spoken only yesterday, before himself and the two police-officers, of his dead fiancée's feeling of fear.

He closed the door and descended the stairs. He was due at the commissioner's shortly. At the entrance di Monti passed him. The Italian stopped at sight of the detective-officer, and a cold smile flickered across his face. A smile with no suggestion of mirth in it.

"A visit to me?"

"Another time will do as well. I am due now at New Scotland Yard," Pointer replied civilly.

Di Monti stood for a second looking at the other without speaking, and Pointer suddenly smelt danger, and very close beside him.

It was a mad idea that he could be attacked in broad daylight, but he knew it to be a fact. He turned away with a nod, and walked slowly on out of the door past the big gray car. The driver, di Monti's man, watched him sleepily.

Pointer, thought that he, too, resembled a beast of prey with forest laws and forest passions. He drove on to the Yard with a feeling that things were about to take some definite turn. That smile of di Monti's, like a snake it had crossed that hard face, it meant something. He felt certain that the count had taken some decision at that moment. What one?

Back at the police station, he learnt that neither Harris nor Rodman had been able to find any one who had seen either Mrs. Lane or Miss Scarlett at the beginning of the concert last Thursday, though at the very end Sibella had slipped in, and Mrs. Lane had taken her seat about the middle of the entertainment.

"Just so." Pointer handed Harris back the report to file away. "They were off on two different missions. Now, Miss Sibella's evening shoes were pretty well covered with garden mould when I saw them on Friday. I think we may take it that she was the one who helped Miss Rose home from the studio in that little two-seater both use."

"I shouldn't wonder," Harris said with alacrity. "Shows that she realised how nasty the count might be, for, as I say, she bars night driving."

"I shouldn't wonder," Pointer quoted with a smile "And now, here's the latest find."

He laid a sheet of notepaper in front of the superintendent. Harris picked it up.

"Never saw such a fist in all my life! Whose is it?"

"The Professor's. It's the letter that Miss Charteris got on Thursday, the one that accompanied the enclosed black-sealed envelope. It's in Italian. Here's what he says."

He laid down another slip. Harris read in English:

"B0LZANO HOTEL LAURIN

"My DEAR DAUGHTER, I am sending you an enclosure with this, addressed to myself, which please keep by you pending future directions. I may want it destroyed. I may not. The weather here is very cold. I wish I had taken your advice and brought my warmer underwear. As you thought, it was quite chilly at Genoa.

"Your affectionate father,

"HENRY CHARTERIS."

"Bit of a sell, eh?" said the disappointed Harris. "And why Italian? His writing would have been enough of a safeguard, I should have thought."

The date was the Monday before Rose was murdered

"Lady Maxwell told me that the professor often talked and wrote both to his daughter and to his niece in Italian so as to keep it up. I found this letter tucked between the pages of a new Italian dictionary in Mrs. Lane's bedroom."

"Hidden?"

"Or laid away in safe keeping. There's nothing much in the letter itself, except that it seems to point to the importance of the accompanying enclosure, which was, as we were told, addressed to the professor himself. The odd thing is, why was this half-sheet taken? Why did Mrs. Lane buy that Italian dictionary late on Thursday at Jephson's in the High Road? Why was she, or they, so anxious to learn what was in the letter? And Genoa," Pointer paused a moment to fill his pipe, "Genoa! That's not the way the colonel told us three separate times that the professor was going into Italy. If you look at your report, you'll see he says that his brother-in-law was going through Italy by way of Modena-Turin-Milan-Venice. His very insistence struck me as odd. Now, here the professor refers to having been in Genoa, and that not as though it had been an afterthought."

Pointer stared at the note a little longer.

"I shouldn't be surprised if Mrs. Lane came so late to the concert because she was in some quiet nook, railway station or bun shop, translating this. It would take her some time The professor's handwriting ought to be forbidden by law. I thought the letter was in cuneiform at first."

"Instead of being in Medchester. I see." Harris nodded solemnly. "Of course, Mrs. Lane's a newcomer down here." His tone indicated resignation to any blows from that quarter. "You think she's in it, then?"

"'It' was always the case to all the men engaged on 'It.'"

"'Fraid so. I think she's the woman who walked in Miss Charteris's shoes on that path to the sand-pit late that same night." Pointer spoke very gravely. "She has a short-stepping gait. Not like Miss Scarlett's stride. And her weight and size of foot would fit the marks."

"Lady Maxwell wears sixes or sevens," Harris said ungallantly. "I measured her footsteps."

The door opened, and Rodman saluted.

"Mrs. Lane's just left for town, sir. The servants say that she told them that the colonel had asked her to look after a furnished house of his some time ago, and that she only waited till the funeral was over before taking up her new duties. Miss Scarlett's going shortly, to stay with Lady Carew at their Devon place. The colonel's remaining on."

Rodman went back to his observation post at Stillwater House.

"With Lady Carew! There you are Alf!" Harris said triumphantly. "You wondered, why Sir Henry wasn't at the funeral. I told you he'd gone to Sledmere. The colonel himself dropped that to me. Now you see that there's no ill-feeling."

"Sir Henry left on Friday afternoon very suddenly for Yorkshire after having backed out nearly a week before at the last moment," Pointer observed.

"Well, what, of it?"

Pointer eyed Harris's indignant face with a twinkle.

"Search me! as the Americans say, and if at the same time you could find the answer to why Sir Henry Carew does not seem to've been notified of Miss Charteris's death, I should be obliged."

"How do you make that out—about his not having been told?"

"I can't be sure, but I came across a list of names to which notices were to be sent that had been given Mrs. Lane. It was a long one. His wasn't on it. One of my men is in the Army and Navy Club, where the two generally hang out, and he says that, according to one of the waiters, Carew learnt it by chance late in the afternoon from a mutual acquaintance. The waiter says Sir Henry had a cab called within the hour and just caught his train."

Pointer glanced at the last note on Harris's pad of the afternoon. Mr. Cockburn had telephoned the result of his efforts to crack the count's alibi. The Chief Inspector looked pleased.

"Good! We'll get him to find out more about the count for us."

Next morning, the morning after the funeral, Pointer received a very austere reply from Mr. Bellairs at Windsor Castle.

The artist stated that he was at a loss to understand the communication which he had just received. He had been indisposed on Thursday evening, and had kept to his rooms, even cancelling a dance engagement. He had not been in Medchester for some time, a fortnight or more, he thought.

Pointer raised a reflective eyebrow, and filed the letter. Then he went to Stillwater House to take a few soundings.

In the lounge sat Sibella, a note open on her knee. Pointer put on a pair of very special glasses. Their action was that of short-range field-glasses. Stepping noiselessly nearer, he read over her shoulder, in di Monti's sharp, black characters:—

"Egregia Signorina."

The letter was in Italian. Translated it ran:

"I shall be on the grass tennis-courts at twelve to-day. Would you be so kind as to meet me there?

"With the most perfect esteem and the most exquisite respect.

"CANGRANDE GIULIO di MONTI."

Sibella shivered, as though chilly.

Pointer would have liked to witness the interview, but he was due in town to give some evidence in an International forgery case which was being tried.

Harris telephoned him an account of the meeting during the lunch interval, and Pointer decided from its brevity that it had been used to settle the time of another appointment. Harris had not been able to hear anything. But he said that only the briefest of sentences on the count's part, and even less on Miss Scarlett's side, had passed.

Pointer was detained. The Bank of England was involved, and he saw that he must confide to Harris and Rodman the watching of events, and trust for the best.

Sibella kept to her rooms all the afternoon. Her father was up in town for the night, closely watched.

One of Pointer's best men from New Scotland Yard was shadowing the count. Rodman, who was proving himself quite good, was ready to take up the chase if Sibella stirred. Her car, Rose's car it had been, was left turned in the garage. The inspector had noted the full tank.

At eight a door creaked. Down the stairs stole Sibella, wrapped in a motoring cloak, with a dark veil wound closely around cap and face, leaving only a mica slit for her eyes. She looked like a rather bulky mummy, but the mummy could see all right, for she made her way swiftly into the grounds.

At the first sound of her, Rodman was out of the lounge where he and Harris had installed themselves behind a couple of easy-chairs. When she reached the garage he was through the front gates, bending over his bicycle.

Hanging on behind, the inspector was driven by Sibella into town and up to a well-known Italian restaurant near Victoria station.

Here she slowed up preparatory to stopping. He fell behind, and getting off, stood with his back to her, talking to a match seller.

"The count's been in here half an hour, sir," the plain clothes man reported, "wrapped up like a conspirator. I think he feels a draught, if you ask me. He's engaged a couple of private rooms. Dinner for one was ready when he came. It's just been cleared away. Coffee for two's been upstairs three minutes. Luigi tells me there's an Aberdeen terrier of the proprietor's on guard outside the door who growls at every foot-fall."

"Did the Chief Inspector give you any further instructions?"

"Yes, sir. To follow the count afterwards. If he goes back to his flat I'm off for home, too. There's another chap watching his rooms all night."

"Good. I'll follow the lady."

It was not a long wait, an hour at most, before the two reappeared in the door. Rodman watched the Alfa Romeo glide away into the darkness. Then he attached himself again to the back of Sibella's car, and was driven home to Stillwater once more.

Close to the main gate he dropped behind. After some minutes he slipped through, stacked his bicycle behind a potting shed, and crept into the house.

Behind his arm-chair sat Harris.

"Gone up yet, sir?" whispered Rodman.

"Hasn't come in yet."

They waited a little longer. Then Rodman rose. "I'm going to the garage to see if anything's up."

Sibella's cubicle was empty. The inspector dared not switch on the light. She might be waiting outside on the drive. He crept forward foot by foot along its winding curves, the awful truth rising higher with every step.

Sibella had gone.

She must have nosed the car down the drive, lights out, and passed on into the road again through one of the two other gates.

He went indoors and asked Harris in a whisper to come out.

"Did you follow her all right?" asked the superintendent.

"All wrong!" groaned Rodman, and he told of his failure.

"Too bad," sympathised the kindly Harris. "Would have happened to any one. But not to Alf," he said privately. "Alf never gets left. Never did. Wherever do you think she's gone to?" he asked aloud.

Rodman wisely refused to start a list of the towns and villages of England.

"Well, when you feel like tackling an early worm, come around to my house. I'm off for bed, as there seems nothing doing here that one man can't handle."

And Rodman certainly did not, and could not, consider himself overworked for the remainder of the night.

It was nearly six in the morning when, like music to the tired ears of the detective, came the sound of the little two-seater again. The front gates opened once more. This time Sibella left her car in the garage, and walked rapidly towards the house. By the light of early day, Rodman had traced the marks of last night quite easily. They ran as he had expected.

At the police station he found the Chief Inspector in possession of the news. Pointer greeted him with at least outward calmness, though he looked very thoughtful. Poor Rodman could hardly swallow a morsel of food.

Half-way through the meal Briggs's voice sounded outside, all eagerness.

"The report's come in from the man who's watching the count's rooms, sir. This is a rum go, and no mistake!"

Pointer lingered to finish his cup of tea. It must serve him at a pinch instead of a night's sleep. Harris shook his head as he led the way into the station.

"A little more of what the chief calls 'tenew' wouldn't harm you, Briggs. You might be an old maid receiving her first proposal. Why, you're all of a twitter. Now let's learn the damage."

Harris took the receiver, and listened with a slowly opening mouth.

"You don't—not Miss—not—well, I'm blowed!" And the upholder of tenew dropped into a chair, then looked at Rodman.

"Some one's drunk. Either you, or me, or that chap who's just reported. Didn't you follow Miss Scarlett all the way back from the restaurant here?"

"Certainly, sir."

"Well, the Yard 'tec says she left Count di Monti's rooms at exactly ten minutes past five this morning."

Pointer, who had come into the room, stared at Harris as though the truth lay graven on the superintendent's very spine, and stretched for the receiver. Then he dropped his hand.

"I'll go myself. But what's the good? There's no need to hurry—now!"

"You talking English?" Harris asked curiously.

"I'll translate." Pointer spoke rather dryly. "Inspector Rodman followed, not Miss Scarlett, but II Primo Capitano del Fascio Arditi, Conte Cangrande Giulio di Monti commanding the 41st Legion of the II. Cohort, from the restaurant to Stillwater last night.

"You said you noticed how much better she was driving, as though she had a weight off her mind," He turned to the breathless Rodman. "The two changed rigs in restaurant, and what with those cloaks, her veiling, his goggles, besides some sort of a lift inside her shoes, they fooled you, Rodman. But that's what happened. Doubtless they chose that restaurant because it's one of the few where cars can be parked practically at the door. She went to his rooms and stayed there till he should be safely aboard a ship, friend's yacht probably. He bought a duplicate outfit of the clothes she was wearing, and left it at his flat for her, as well as a woman's rigout for himself, which latter he sends in a box to the restaurant. She rests in peace and quiet in his rooms, and changes again. At the hour agreed on, five, she comes down to Stillwater by taxi. He leaves her two-seater at some place not far off, when he's picked up by a friend's motor. There you have their little plan. Simple, eh?"

"Well, I'm glad it ain't what I first thought!" Briggs said simply.

"So 'm I!" said Harris. "Though helping a murderer, to escape! In love with him. Must be! If so, this version sounds the sort of thing Miss Sib might do. She's all the 'go' of the Scarletts in her. But to connive at an escape!" Harris ruminated on. "She has gone and got herself into a nice fix! She can't have thought him guilty, that's sure!"

"On the contrary," Pointer almost laughed, "on the contrary! It shows that di Monti told her that he murdered Miss Charteris. Or Miss Scarlett would never have done what she did. If, by some mischance, say a fire, she had been found in his rooms! She wouldn't have run that risk unless she thought beyond a chance of a mistake both that he was guilty, and that he was in a very tight place. I rather felt that he was putting his back against the wall when I met him on the stairs of his rooms. Now what could have—I won't say frightened him, di Monti isn't a frightenable, man—but shown him that if he wanted to get away he must do so at once?"

And as though it were a play at a theatre, and those words his cue, a constable entered the room and supplied the answer.

He held out a pear-shaped, dark blue stone that glittered and sparkled as though rolled in gold dust. At the smaller end was a wreath of silver leaves with clusters of grapes in amethysts and garnets. A grape tendril served as a loop, and cut into the other end were three gold bails and the initials C.M. It was the Medici pendant.

"Where in the world did you get this from?" Superintendent Harris got out his notebook.

"From Fiery Jim, sir."

"Temper?" asked Pointer.

"Neither. He's a good sort, is poor Jim, but he can't resist a fire. Born that way. Chronic. He'd set fire to himself if there were no other way of turning out the fire brigade, and they don't like it. Neither do the farmers."

"Naturally?"

"Very naturally. So we see to it that he stays in workhouses when he's not in prison. Never for anything but incendiarism, I assure you. He's quite a favourite, when he's safe. There's no vice in Fiery Jim."

"And how does he explain this find?"

"The shepherd put me on to him, sir. He'd noticed' him playing with it. At first the old chap took it for granted it was a piece of glass, but when he looked closer he recognised it by the description, and brought Jim here."

"Have him in."

Fiery Jim was not good at consecutive narrative. But the superintendent was capital on this, his own ground, and unwound him as I neatly as a silk spinner would a cocoon, firmly but gently drawing from him what he wanted.

Jim's many half-tales, woven together, made this:

Last Thursday night he was walking along the short cut on an errand from the Master of Medchester workhouse with a boy as guardian, when they saw a tall, dark, well-dressed man come striding out from the copse. This was just as the church clock struck ten, for it was to count the strokes that the two had stopped and turned. Jim saw that the man was a stranger, and asked for a match. The stranger didn't understand. Jim held out his hand, repeating his request. The man seemed to mistake him for a beggar. He snarled out something about an echo, and flung a stone at him. Jim's black eye was an "exhibit" to this part of the story. The stranger tore on, and Jim groped for the stone, to carry it and his tale to the Master. But he liked the way it flashed, and sparkled, and kept it as a plaything, taking it out every now and then, and watching it. Fiery Jim had no idea of values.

Harris sent him in to have "something from Mrs. Harris," after he had made quite sure that Jim could not identify the man.

"We don't need identification beyond what he heard," Pointer said at once "The echo that Jim heard spoken about was, of course, the Italian for here!'—Ecco! This only bears out what we know already, but it does explain as well why the count decided to leave so hurriedly."

"Once he knew or heard that that pendant was found he was up a tree!" Superintendent Harris agreed, locking the stone carefully away in the safe. "The chief told me that on Saturday the count had spoken of a large reward he wanted to offer for this stone, and then on Monday morning he had dropped in to say that on the whole he thought he would postpone the offer till he heard from his father."

"Just so," Pointer stared at his boot tips. "His flinging that stone at Jim here is all of a piece with his slashing Miss Charteris's portrait, with his dropping a pebble or two on her coffin, with his trampling on the flowers that she had worn in the studio, and which came off as she scrambled out of the window, I suppose, or which she took off when she flung her knitted frock on over the other. Yes, the count both wanted, and feared, to get that stone back. If he could lay his hands on it again without any risk of it leaking out how and when he had flung it away, he wanted it back in safe keeping. But as soon as he remembered that the man at whom he had dashed it in his mad fury at ten on Thursday night might bring it to the police instead of to him, he decided to let sleeping dogs lie. So that was why he insisted at the inquest and afterwards on the fact that it was of no value whatever. Not of much value, perhaps, but of considerable danger—to him!"

"I see it all now." Harris spoke as though the sight were rather pleasant, compared with some mental visions which had been vouchsafed him lately.

A telephone inquiry confirmed Pointer. Di Monti's rooms were empty. Master and man had gone, and had their luggage, conveyed piecemeal to cleaners and bootmakers by the astute valet to be re-assembled elsewhere, and packed in new valises.

Pointer had hardly rung off when his telephone tinkled again.

"Chief Inspector Pointer wanted. Mr. Gilchrist speaking."

Speaking, apparently, from the context both as coroner and as the Charteris's family solicitor.

"I acted on your suggestion, and managed to reach Miss Jones, the professor's secretary, who was on a walking tour in Devon. She went up to his club last night and fetched his correspondence. The hall porter knows her, and that she is empowered by the professor himself to take charge of any letters in an emergency."

"Good!" said Pointer, for there is no place in the world more inviolable than the letter-rack of a club, and within the august portals of the Athenum, Scotland Yard's highest were lower than the youngest buttons.

"If you care to step in this morning about eleven," Mr. Gilchrist went on "she'll be here with the letters and you can have a look at them."

Pointer was prompt to the minute. He found Miss. Jones to be an intelligent, middle-aged woman, evidently devoted to her employer and his interests.

"Here is a letter which the professor has sent, addressed to himself and sealed, in another covering-envelope, also so addressed." Gilchrist handed it over to be looked at.

"He often sends me private papers in that way," Miss. Jones explained, as had Sibella before. "I put them in his desk, just as they are, till his return."

Pointer saw a long envelope, looking much the worse for wear, having evidently been folded across the middle, sealed with black wax, and addressed to Professor H. Charteris.

"Where's the envelope it came in?" he asked.

Miss Jones fished it out of the waste-paper basket.

It was addressed to the professor at his club, and had been sent from Milan on the Friday that Rose had been found murdered.

The handwriting on the outer envelope was not Professor Charteris's, but Miss Jones explained that his eyesight being weak when he had mislaid his glasses, which occurred every five minutes, he would commission the nearest-at-hand waiter, or hall-porter, to address an envelope for him.

"You have not heard from him otherwise in any way?"

She had not. Like the solicitor, she was not in the least anxious on account of the silence, though the latter was beginning to think it time that Charteris should come across the daily advertisement asking him to wire or write, if he could not come to England.

"I should like to examine this a little more closely." Pointer still held the long envelope with the black seals. "I should like to photograph it at my rooms."

"Short of opening it, you're welcome to do whatever you think fit," Gilchrist said heartily. "The rest are a couple of circulars of no importance."

Pointer, in his own rooms at the police station, tried the little fragments of black sealing-wax that he had found in the professor's envelope that he had fished out of Rose's chain bag and taken from the table in the studio. He found that they were not too numerous to have dropped off the seals if the letter had been carried about for some hours.

He believed, from the envelope's frayed look, that this was the same letter that had been posted to England once before, reaching Rose on Thursday at tea-time, and which had not been seen since her death. There was still a faint fragrance lingering about the flap that matched the perfume in her bag. The description tallied absolutely. He looked up the trains in Bradshaw. It was now Saturday.

Suppose some one left London by the boat train either Thursday night or even Friday morning and his Paris-Milan express was on time, then he would have an hour in Milan station in which to post the letter back again in the returning Milan-Paris express.

That looked as though some one had taken the letter by mistake, or accident, and posted it from Italy in order to make it seem as though the professor were sending it. In that case, it must be some one who knew that the professor had sent it, to his daughter in the first place, but that she was now dead.

Suppose that he, Pointer, were right, and that Rose had taken it with her in her little bag to the studio, had noticed it when there, and, taking it out, had laid it on the table by the door, in a place where she thought that she could not overlook it on leaving, had forgotten it in her hurried dash when she heard the furious Italian at the front door. Suppose that di Monti, finding Rose gone, had swooped on the proof of her presence in the room. Pointer imagined that he might intend to keep it to confront her with. But after her murder the letter would be very incriminating evidence. Yet, however violent, di Monti was a gentleman. He might kill, but Pointer could not see him tampering with correspondence.

Pointer imagined him giving the letter to a friend. In all likelihood to a brother of the Prince Cornaro who had confirmed the count's alibi. For Scotland Yard knew that young Prince Amadeo Cornaro had left early on Friday morning for Italy. Certainly the envelope must have been returned by some one who knew of the professor's little way of sending securely fastened letters back to himself.

Pointer photographed the envelope. There were no signs of its having been tampered with in any way Or rather, to his microscopic scrutiny, it showed many little proofs that it had not been opened.

With a thin, warm knife he sliced off the seals, and then steamed open the envelope. Inside was a single sheet of paper, headed, in the professor's writing, "Memo on Refractions." Below came couple of lines of figures and equations.

Pointer photographed the paper and fastened the envelope up again exactly as it had been. When the wax was cold he returned it to Gilchrist, who put it with the professor's private papers.