Читать книгу Chief Inspector Pointer's Cases - 12 Golden Age Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding - Страница 26

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DRIVING to New Scotland Yard at once, Pointer learnt that the memo was of no value, though it was connected, as he had surmised, with the manufacture of emeralds.

This was a blow. He had expected something from those algebraical formulae. What, he himself hardly knew. But something big.

He dropped in at his Bayswater rooms and found O'Connor waiting for him with lunch. Over the cheese, and a pile of the curly toast beloved of the Chief Inspector, thin, and brown, and crisp, as birch leaves in a frost, he told his friend of the latest developments.

"So the letter isn't the clue after all!"

"Why not? I seem to've been misled as to its contents. Suppose some one else was mistaken, too? Suppose I wasn't the only one who hoped for something different from what was there? A hunt after letters, or papers, runs through this case. There was the search among the professor's rooms shortly after his daughter was found dead. Then there's the theft of Miss Charteris's own letters from the chief constable's house."

"And there's the Odyssey of this enclosed letter itself. The one just sent back from Milan. Though, faith, it doesn't look the sort of thing to interest the count," mused O'Connor. "But it might some of the others. How about getting him back again, by the way?"

"It'll only be a matter of days before the Yard learns of his whereabouts, unless he intends to go permanently into hiding."

"But when you've got him," O'Connor went on, "you've still to find the motive for all the rest of that Thursday night show. The moving of the body, and what happened on those flags. D'ye think the colonel could help you to a short cut?"

"I told the superintendent that Scarlett's a difficult man to read, and so he is. At first he acted as though a weight were lifting off him. Yet every hour that passes without disclosing the criminal in a case of this kind usually gets on people's nerves. And now lately, he's just opposite. He looks to me like a man ridden by some ever-growing fear. He's all on the qui vive every time any one approaches him suddenly."

"Perhaps he's afraid for himself, or his daughter?"

"Neither. He never carries even a stout stick. There isn't a fire-arm handy in the house. He takes no precautions. But he does take two Italian papers since about a week ago. About the time of the murder."

"I wonder if he's in this," O'Connor speculated, "with di Monti and that Mrs. Lane. Of course, we know di Monti struck the blow, but who else was there?"

"The funny thing is," Pointer reached up for a Chinese ball-puzzle on the mantelpiece above him, "that I've a perfectly unsound idea, which I wouldn't mention to any one but you, connecting Mrs. Lane with—not di Monti nor the colonel—but with Thornton."

"How's that?"

"Difficult to explain. He's never natural when her name comes up. Either too indifferent, or changes the subject, or something—I can't put a name to it. But I've had from the first a very strong feeling that she moves him, touches him in some quite peculiar way."

"In love with her?"

"Why not be so openly? All our accounts show that he rarely talked much to her, nor she to him. Yet he kept his eyes on Mrs. Lane, and on Mrs. Lane alone, at the inquest, once the doctor began to stir things up. As she went out she looked at him. Odd look. One I haven't a label for."

"You'd expect that she and di Monti would be standing in together—"

"Then that won't be what we'll find," Pointer said dryly.

"And how's the pencil getting along?" asked the Irishman.

"It's feeling a bit lonely, but still hopeful. So far, it's only led us into cul-de-sacs, but as it's my best find, I mustn't decry it."

There was a long silence while the two old friends smoked on.

"Could that formula be more valuable than you think?" O'Connor asked at length.

"Our expert is quite certain. It's not possible for him to be mistaken."

"True. One never did hear of a policeman making a mistake," O'Connor murmured pensively.

"But unless the owner of the pencil turns up, I'm running over to Italy the day after to-morrow to see if I can't find Charteris."

"You are, eh?" O'Connor eyed him gravely, speculatively.

"And," Pointer returned his look, "I feel, like you, by no means certain that I shall find him."

"Looks that way to me. If his daughter was killed for anything to do with a letter which he might have written or sent. And what's the artist doing all this time?"

"Bellairs? He comes back from Windsor Castle tonight But I'm going to leave him alone for the moment He's watched, of course, but I'm trying to unwind the affair from the other end."

"And the chief constable down there. How's he getting along?" O'Connor liked to keep count of all the cast.

Pointer laughed. "I may be doing a most zealous officer a bitter injustice. But I suspect him of being exceedingly glad that he's out of it all. The colonel and his friends are all friends of Major Vaughan's, too. We'll see a marked improvement when this case is settled one way or another, I fancy. And it's going to take some stiff routine work before it's settled. It's the most extraordinary affair for one reason. You'd expect a gang of apaches to hang together, whatever the crimes, but the Stillwater crowd are all well-to-do, well-behaved, wellborn. They're not like a tenement house of starving east-enders."

"Me noble father having been Court Chamberlain, and talking as I am to the belted son of a duke," O'Connor murmured lackadaisically, "it's natural we should look on tenement-house dwellers with proper scorn."

Pointer grunted. "You know what I mean," he said impertinently. "Of all that Stillwater circle, there's not one, not one, mind you, of whom I can say with absolute certainty, 'Whoever's in it, it isn't he!'"

"Him!" retorted O'Connor, "don't be a prig, Alf. You wouldn't say 'It isn't he under any circumstances,' and you know it."

"It isn't he," Pointer repeated unmoved. Not to him had the English grammar come unprized, as a birthright. Son of a coast-guard, it was with many an hour's work that he had bought freedom in it, and he valued that ease accordingly.

"And yet all of them should be above suspicion by their positions, you'd think. But they're all in it, in the most baffling way. There's the colonel—apart from everything else, why did he cut down that blackthorn tree before any one was up on Friday morning? But his record is quite all right. Late of the 10th Hussars. No shady relations. Only son's a Commissioner in Uganda. The last Tanganyka Times is full of some exploration of his around in the interior. Then there's Mr. Thornton—"

"He called you down, didn't he? Ungrateful bobby!"

"I allow him due credit, for, without his having done that, the threads of this case would have been impossible to pick up—from this end. There're always two ways of reaching any goal. But he's an odd fish. He's not straight with me. His hand, mind you, was practically forced by two young men from the Foreign Office."

"But who is he?"

"Took high honours at New College. Member of the bar. Councillor to various embassies abroad for some years. Travelled a bit in Persia. Knows everybody, and yet hasn't an intimate friend, unless it be Professor Charteris.

"Then take Mr. Cockburn and Mr. Bond. We know all about them, too. Blameless pasts, promising futures. Yet I found them breaking into the colonel's study on Friday evening."

"In order to help the case forward," put in O'Connor.

"So they say! Then the women. Mrs. Lane's, of course, the dark horse of the outfit, so far. There's only one thing I can prove for certain against her, whatever we may think, and that is that it was from her silk cloak that the piece is missing which I found in the clutch of Thornton's car. As she wore the same cloak driving in to town on Friday, and made no complaint about it, and told the maid that she had just stepped on it while getting out, I take it that she tore it herself. Then there's Lady Maxwell. It's her frock that's bloodstained, and the colonel backs off at sight of her. Then Miss Scarlett—she's too much shaken by her cousin's death. She looks like a ghost."

"You're hard to satisfy, Alf."

"I try to be."

"But who, in God's name, would shield the murderer of that lovely girl?" O'Connor asked. "You'd have thought the count would have had short shrift from every one down there. Do you think it's two sets of crimes? Jealousy that struck the blow, and then some other interest altogether? Something to do with the enclosed letter that moved the corpse and searched the bag?"

"I'd rather not say what I think just yet, but the professor has some very important affairs bubbling along, apart from the emeralds."

There was a short silence, then O'Connor paused in his work.

"That man you're trying to get hold of seems to be an extra down there? I mean, the man of the summer house. I suppose he couldn't be the professor returned unexpectedly? Perhaps saw his daughter murdered, and went for the murderer?" O'Connor asked, half-sceptical of his own fancy.

"I don't know," Pointer replied seriously, "but I do know that neither the professor nor any one else even remotely connected with what I call the Stillwater circle was the man inside the summer house bedroom. I've examined all their finger-prints most carefully."

Back at the police station Inspector Rodman met Pointer with a face officially wooden, but with a very human satisfaction betraying itself in his voice.

"Mrs. Lane's lost, too, sir. The detective from the Yard has just 'phoned to you to report as much."

"She went into one of those all-over-the-place shops, and they haven't seen her since," moaned Harris. "Lost in London!"

Pointer gave him a fleeting smile.

"Sounds like the title of a film, and you might be the bereaved parent. She's not out of reach. On the whole, its possibly as well. We were getting a bit stale. Now she thinks she's safe, and she may send some message that will let us get hold of things more important still. And who are these in bright array?"

It was Cockburn and Bond, driving up post haste. They had just learnt of the count's disappearance from his rooms in town, and were down to find out if there was still nothing that they could do.

Harris, according to the immemorial rule of the Force, assured them that all had gone according to plan. The two young men looked as unbelieving as though they were hearing that time-honoured phrase in a battle report.

"I'd got quite a step along," Cockburn put in disconsolately, "I mean finding out that his alibi was rocky. Not bad that for an amateur, was it?" He looked at Pointer for approval, and he got it very heartily. Cockburn had done quite well in finding out the shakiness of the much-vaunted alibi.

"The count isn't out of reach," Pointer assured the two friends. "Safely isolated is the way to look at it. But if either of you could find out anything about the plans of the Inner Fascist Council in Rome concerning meetings, places, and so on, we might be able to guess where next to locate him. I don't deny that in matters of this kind, the Foreign Office naturally has a great pull over the Secret Service."

They drove off quite full of how the news might possibly be obtained through a certain agent which the F. O. employed in the heart of Roman aristocracy, which is tantamount to saying in the heart of Fascist circles. That done, Pointer turned his attention to the two microphone-dictaphones which Rodman and one of Scotland Yard's flying squad brought in daily. Stillwater House telephone and the telephone of the Army and Navy Club, the only one which the colonel now used, were both connected with these useful inventions.

For at the club, one of the waiters, after a talk with Detective Inspector Watts of Scotland Yard, had decided that he was feeling run down, and that a week's breathing of the pure ozone of Brighton's picture-palaces would just suit his budding complaint.

So Watts, who, it seemed, was his brother, took his place, and was proving a most efficient locum tenens from every point of view.

All messages received by either house were repeated into the attentive ear of the Chief Inspector twice daily.

Suddenly Pointer gave an inward start. He was busy with the club records.

"Sir Henry Carew, please," asked a woman's voice, the voice of Mrs. Lane. "Will you ask him to come to the telephone for a minute?"

There was a pause. Then the voice came again.

"Sir Henry Carew? Good-morning, Sir Henry. You know who's speaking, don't you? Will you tell our friend that M. M. is quite satisfied. He thinks the horse is getting on excellently. Yes, that's all. Good-bye."

The remainder of the messages were of no importance.

"M. M.!" Pointer arranged with Harris and Rodman to "carry on," and sped up to his friend the divisional surgeon.

"Look here, Scott, I want you to get me into Sir Martin Martineau's home. You told me he was chiefly for head-trouble or accidents. Channel islander, I think you said. I've a splitting headache. Had it for days. My eyes pain me every time I turn them. When I suddenly stop walking, I see strange flashes—"

Doctor Scott hummed a tune with heartless accuracy as he walked over to his shelves. He pulled out a book.

"If I had this beggar examined by some of your unholy arts at the Yard, I should find your finger-prints on it, Pointer. You were left here for just ten minutes while I wrote out that girl's prescription, and you haven't wasted one of them."

"My name's Brown," Pointer went on, "and I had a motor smash a few days ago. It's since then my head hurts me so."

Pointer slumped back in his chair, and gave a groan. Scott turned around with a startled exclamation. "Where in the world did you pick that up? That groan, I mean?"

Pointer looked at him with a twinkle.

"I studied that for a matter of days and nights when I was in charge of a very prominent Greek gentleman who feared assassination. We had a stormy sea all the way from Portsmouth to the Pireus, and he spent every hour of it groaning. I stored them up for future need. I used to practise with him, up and down, to make sure the timbre was right. He thought the sea affected me too. But you've only heard the Channel one; you wait till I let off my Cape Matapan heartbreaker. He's a peach!"

"How long do you expect to be in that home before they turn you out as an impostor?"

"How can I be an impostor when I pay my way? I may be a neurasthenic, but only poor chaps are impostors."

"Well, how long do you expect to stay?"

"One night will do."

"Oh, of course, in that case—as a matter of fact, Sir Martin's away in Scotland, I saw in the papers, so now's your chance."

"I suppose he won't operate on me in my sleep?" Pointer was just a trifle in earnest. He had no love for surgeons.

"My dear chap, you won't get within a dozen rooms of his knife. They'll X-ray you first, find nothing the matter, and tell you so at once."

"Good. 'Phone up for me and ask for their best room. I'll take a taxi after a little preparation. May I use your bedroom?"

Pointer dressed himself in purple and fine linen, and packed an expensively-fitted bag with clothes to match. A skilful sprinkling of bleached hairs was all that he dared try, but that, and his drooping, quivering lids, and tremulous, saggy mouth, and slouching attitude made a marvellous difference.

"I hope I shall live to get there, doctor," he mumbled as Scott hailed a taxi and Pointer hobbled down the steps, "I hope so indeed!" And he gave a moan that made the driver's spine, crawl.

As for Doctor Scott, to the man's indignation, he merely, shut the door and said callously, "Oh, you'll be all right, if you pull yourself together and make an effort, Mr. Brown." He gave a signal and off Pointer started.

The doctor's telephone message had made the entering of the handsome old Georgian house quite easy. A sympathetic matron superintended his entry on the arm of a solicitous house-porter. His room was ready for him. In about an hour he would be X-rayed, and then the trouble would be easily found. Sir Martin would be back tomorrow afternoon, and possibly by the next day all would be right. Thus the matron, and Pointer nodded wearily as he sat in the lift huddled together. When it stopped, he gave one of his groans, Bay of Biscay this time, and had the satisfaction of seeing the matron nearly trip over the sill. Without a word, she had him helped to his room, and tiptoed out, saying that she would send Nurse Mason to him at once.

Pointer's eyes, deep hidden under his nearly closed lids, studied the young woman attentively. He did not often make a mistake, if the person left a clear impression on him, and Miss Mason left a very distinct one. He judged her to be both exceedingly honest, and exceedingly loyal. Most estimable qualities, as he was the first to admit, but not at all what he was in search of to-night. A few hours later Pointer was shown into the X-ray room by an orderly, and took an instant liking to his foxy face with the avaricious mouth.

"Come to my room the last thing to-night," Pointer muttered, and the man bowed with a knowing and obsequious smile, "Very good, sir."

Something in a glass for the patient, and something in his pocket for himself, was the usual outcome of this often heard remark. Once they were "cases" the thing was too risky, of course, but beforehand—why not let them have a cocktail?

So at eleven o'clock that night in slipped Mr. Keane. He saw in the light of the reading lamp a bulky something in bed, and closed the door with a gentle cough.

"I'm come, sir."

He turned with a gasp. The door was locked behind him, and Pointer faced him with a very masterful look.

"It's all right; don't be alarmed, man! I'm a private detective. I want some information on behalf of a wealthy, client who's prepared to pay for it."

"Well, this is a movie!" The man grinned. "To think those moans of yours were fakes! They'd make the fortune of a street beggar, wouldn't they! Nearly froze my blood, they did, and I've heard some in my time. But what's all this about?"

"It's about a man who was brought in here late last, Thursday night, May 1st, with some cuts on him." Pointer took out his notebook and also a five-pound note. "Know anything about such a man?"

"Is that a book-mark?" asked Keane, looking at it.

"It's a prize for a bright boy," Pointer assured him "Did any man come here that night?"

"I know that a chap came, but that's all that I do know."

"Can you get me a glimpse of him?"

"Nothing doing," the man said glumly. "Had your groans for nothing. No one is allowed near that room but her High Mightiness the Matron and her equally Grand Highness Nurse Mason. He's had an operation, by Sir Martin on Saturday, and seems to be doing well as Mr. Carlyle, that's the house doctor and assistant surgeon, only visits him night and morning. That enough for a fiver?"

Pointer shook his head and returned the note to his letter-case.

"Might run to ten shillings," he said musingly.

"And how do I know who you are? Looks a fishy job to me, if ever I saw one."

"I'm Merton, of Merton and Mertons, private detectives. There's my card; you can 'phone to my office and ask about me."

The head of the firm in question was an ex-inspector of the Yard, and Pointer had made his arrangements. Keane looked at the ten-shilling note.

"Hand it over then."

Pointer cocked his head on one side.

"Takes a bit of earning, does a ten-shilling note these hard times, my man. I might raise it to a pound if I could see into the room for a second."

"You might!" ironically repeated the other, "and what price my place? Nothing doing!"

"I might double that again if I could go over the clothes the young man wore when he came. I suppose he is a young man?"

The ten shillings changed hands.

"Can't say. How's that for honesty? I never saw him. The matron and Mr. Carlyle were waiting for the car, and got him on to the stretcher themselves. His mother helped them."

"Was that usual? The house-surgeon and the matron being on the lookout like that?"

"Not unusual, perhaps. But they've never made such a fuss before about not letting any one into the room afterwards. I happened to open the door by mistake, and that Mason snapped my nose off."

"Severe case, eh?"

"Not since the operation. There's been no call for ice bags, let alone the oxygen pump. But that stretcher was a sight! He must have all but cut an artery."

Then Keane went off for the clothes.

"Nothing doing," he said on his return "Blest if they haven't gone. To the cleaners and laundry, says the tag hanging in their place. But his shoes have gone, too! And a travelling rug, that I know came with him, isn't there. Fine and stained it was, too."

Pointer got the name of the laundry and cleaners generally patronised by the institution.

"When was the operation?"

"Tuesday morning."

The date was the first Tuesday after Rose's death. "Sister in charge of the theatre approachable?"

"I don't think!" Keane made a grimace which it took handsomer features than his to carry off successfully.

"Now, the man's mother, can you describe her?"

"Tall and slender. Veiled like one of those Eastern Harems."

"Came in a car?" Pointer asked

"She did. What's more, she drove it in. I was a bit late coming in, and I happened to slip in behind it."

"But if she was closely veiled, how did she drive?"

"Well, that's funny, now you speak of it, but I happened to be going out of the gate when she drove off—to post a letter, you know—I again happened to see her meet a big stout man around the first corner. She got out and stood talking for a minute Then he put his arms round her and kissed her, and after that he climbed into the driving seat and they drove off."

"Kissed her?" Something in his tone made Keane glance at him out of the corners of his eyes.

"You seem struck all of a heap. He kissed her as though he meant it, too. None of your hit or miss pecks."

"I thought you said she was veiled so tightly—"

"Well, what of it? He kissed one cheek, veil and all, and looked as though he would have been quite pleased to kiss the other, but she stepped on into the car."

"Did she seem to mind being kissed? Move away, I mean, or that?"

"Not a bit. She sort of half-leant her head on his shoulder, like as though she were dead tired, you know, before she bucked up and got into the car."

Pointer spread his photographs on the table.

"Can you recognise him?"

"That's him." The man picked up one of Colonel Scarlett. "That's him, right enough."

"Could you swear to him?"

"Till all's blue."

"Good. Now I want something with the patient's finger-prints on it. A tumbler, how would that do? Could you manage to get me the one he uses?"

Keane shook his head.

"No more than you could sneak the King's sceptre. He's guarded night and day."

"Guarded?"

"Well, what do you think? Of course, Sir Martin is always careful, but over this case! I tell you that chap hasn't been left alone for a half-second. He's of tremendous importance to somebody."

Pointer thought a moment

"What is Sir Martin's general fee for head operations?"

"Plain sailing ones, fifty pounds; dicky ones, a hundred. Not going to be done for the fun of the thing, are you?"

Pointer was thinking of a cheque to "Self" that the colonel had drawn on Friday as soon as the banks were open. It had been for two hundred pounds, and he had asked for it all in Bradburys.

Pointer dismissed the orderly and walked the floor, knee-deep in the detached facts of the case. They still refused to shape into that neat circle which alone means the true theory of a crime. Yet they were so numerous that he felt sure that the essential ones were here to hand, buried though they might be beneath accidentals. They could not all be tangents by rights.

As he picked them up one by one, and examined and tested each afresh, he found that there was one fact told him, and accepted by him, which, if broken, would let all the rest link in one behind the other.

Next morning he was as keen to be off as any belated burglar. The house-surgeon explained that there could be nothing organic the matter. Pointer refused the proffered arrangement with a home for nerve cases, and shambled into a taxi again, but this time with Keane's address safely in his letter-case.

Back at Doctor Scott's, Pointer changed, and, well content, drove down to Medchester.

At Red Gates he found Mr. Thornton, looking very weary of his work, and of his cottage, and of his life in general, walking up and down his balcony, an unlit pipe between his teeth.

Pointer thought of his own words about Colonel Scarlett's face after reading the letter brought him at lunch on the day before Rose was killed.

Thornton had said that his host had looked like a man who had learnt that something on which he confidently counted had gone all wrong. That description fitted Thornton's own face and manner exactly, as he stopped and nodded to the detective-officer.

"To-morrow morning at eleven, sir, would you kindly manage to make time to come to my rooms at New Scotland Yard? I want to get the people chiefly associated with Stillwater House assembled in a sort of meeting."

"Royal command? Or are startling developments expected?" Thornton asked caustically.

"At eleven, then, sir." Pointer spoke as though the other had accepted with alacrity. "Unfortunately, I can't get the women's finger-prints. Mrs. Lane's, for instance. I suppose, by the way," Pointer threw in, "that you never met her before she went to Stillwater House?"

"Never!" Thornton said the word before the other had finished his question. Yet Pointer knew from a short note that Watts had found among the colonel's papers at his club that Mrs. Lane had met Thornton before. It was a vague letter as far as dates or facts were concerned, but that was clear enough in it.

Next morning saw Colonel Scarlett, Thornton, Bellairs, Bond, and Cockburn all wedged into the inner of Pointer's three official rooms, which was all but filled by a large table.

Bellairs was a small, handsome man, with a face that Pointer would not have cared to trust.

"Close fit," Bond commented, insinuating himself lithely into the back row.

"By jove, it's a breakfast party." Cockburn bent over the centre of the table, where empty soup plates were ranged in a square. "Place-cards and all."

"Now, gentlemen," Pointer explained, "we have discovered in the sand-pit close to where Miss Charteris's body was found, the marks of a man's doubled-up fists. Such a mark as he might make if he tried to raise himself up on them—this sort of way." Pointer clenched his hands, and, leaning heavily on the table before him, raised himself out of the chair. As he had made the marks himself in the sand that morning, he knew what he wanted. "All rings must be taken off, because there is a curious mark on one—the back of the fingers in our cast where it joins the hand. As there's no room on the table, and there's mercury in the mixture, I think the rings had better go on that shelf behind there."

Watts was not a well-trained waiter, and there was some little confusion and clatter before each man had two soup plates with a thick white mixture set before him, which he had thrust his fist vigorously. Then a basin of water, soap, and piles of towels were brought in, and after a wash, rings were resumed, chairs pushed away, and the meeting was over.

"Are we innocent or guilty?" asked Thornton, getting up.

"Can't tell yet for certain, sir, but I don't see any signs of that little mark I spoke of in any of the plates." Pointer inspected them.

"D'ye mean to say you've got a list of suspects, and once you've scratched us off, you bag the remainder?" asked Bond curiously.

Pointer only made some non-committal answer.

"What about the count?" asked Bellairs.

"I expect to get his impressions myself in Italy," Pointer explained. "I hope to have an interview with him as soon as may be."

He looked at "Bond and Co.," who had forwarded him a most useful cipher cable.

Next morning the Chief Inspector was on his way to Paris and Genoa. Full instructions had been left with the superintendent and Rodman for every eventuality, but Pointer expected nothing startling or showy—until his return.

Genoa shows only its ugly back to the station, and keeps its beautiful face for the sea, its age-old friend. Pointer wasted no time in looking about him. He made his way to an Italian hotel in the heart of the climbing town. After a wash and brush up, he went at once to the Sotutto.

There are many inquiry agencies in Italy, many of them reputable concerns. At the head of all for efficiency and reliability stands the one he had chosen.

Pointer's investigations were backward-reaching. He laid a portrait of Professor Charteris, and one of di Monti, and the portraits of all the people concerned in, the Stillwater case, as far as he knew them, before the manager, a pleasant, clever-faced Genoese.

"This," Pointer pencilled a mark on the back of the professor's picture, "is the man I chiefly want to learn about. Then I want to know if this man—di Monti—or any of the other men have been seen in your town. I am prepared to pay handsomely for the information. I should think the inquiry might start about three weeks to a fortnight ago. But that is only guesswork."

The manager made his notes.

"How long can you give us?"

"I need the information as soon as possible. This is a big case. Put extra men on the job. I want to be away to-night if possible."

It was possible. It is amazing what discreet track is kept on all foreigners in Italy.

When he called again in answer to a telephone message, he learnt this:

Professor Charteris had come to the Hotel Miramare on a Friday, just a week before Rose was found murdered, in company with a very tall, dark, listless-looking man, whom the hall-porter had never seen before, or since. He would judge him to be about thirty. They had breakfasted together in the professor's private sitting-room, and a good deal of low-voiced conversation had gone on between them. Coming down together afterwards, the lift had stuck fast owing to a short circuit, and they had been delayed between floors for nearly a quarter of an hour. The lift boy had had another passenger beside the professor and the professor's companion. That was a visitor, who, like Charteris, was well known to the hotel. He had greeted the professor as an old friend, and the professor, after a pause, as the lift absolutely refused to budge, had hurriedly, and almost under his breath, introduced his companion as Mr. Sayce.

He had added that "Mr. Sayce is interested in my scheme for emeralds, so kindly forget that you've seen either of us here. Some very delicate negotiations are going on."

The lift-boy had particularly remembered the little scene, partly, because he thought that the three men were the last types which he would have connected with business or trade of any sort, and being an American, he had an eye for that well-known species of his fellow man, and partly because of the feeling that neither the professor nor, least of all, the man called Sayce were at all keen on meeting the man who had spoken to Charteris. When the latter got into the lift at the floor below the professor's, the young man had turned his back on him, until the delay had forced the three into a sort of temporary intimacy. When deposited at last on the ground floor, the younger man had had a cab called, and had driven off alone to the station. He had no luggage with him.

"The man who spoke to Professor Charteris in the lift, you have his name?"

The detective had, and his home address. He was a Professor Witherspoon, a Cambridge light, and was staying at the Villa Sole, Obermais, Meranoo.

Pointer put in some hours of strenuous work, at Genoa, tracing, tracking, comparing. Then he got the hall-porter to put him through to Professor Witherspoon.

He heard a thin, cheerful, kindly voice.

"Professor Witherspoon speaking. Who are you?"

"Sayce. You met me in the stuck lift of the Miramare a fortnight ago. I don't know if you remember—"

"Perfectly. Is the Professor with you?"

"No, it's about him I'm 'phoning. Have you heard from him since he left here, the day after we met? I've returned for an appointment, and can't learn where he is."

"How trying. He spoke of Verona, didn't he?"

"He did. But he hadn't turned up to fetch, or send for his fermo posta letters there. You haven't happened to hear of, or from him, then?"

"Yes. He telephoned me the next Monday from Bolzano, the branch station for Meranoo, you know, that he might just possibly drop in for a chat on Wednesday afternoon. He thought of walking over by way of the Mendel Pass. But he didn't come. He was very vague about the trip. Making it dependent on the weather, and how fit he might be feeling."

"Monday, April twenty-eighth?"

"That was the date."

"You haven't heard from him since?"

"Not a word. The weather's been very cold, even here. But wasn't he going to stay with an Italian family? I seem to remember an old Veronese name."

"Di Monti? I might try there. You can't suggest any other likely spot for a cast? The matter's most urgent, or I wouldn't have rung you up."

"I'm only sorry not to be of any help. No. I don't remember hearing our friend mention any other place. We chiefly talked of the wonderful Buru Bhudor finds, you may remember. But I think even the indefatigable Charteris would hardly have gone there."

Pointer had no idea where or what the "wonderful finds" might be.

"You could hardly call them in Italy, could you?" he fished cautiously.

"Hardly," came the smiling reply, "no, hardly."

Pointer dared probe no further, and the whereabouts of the afore-mentioned ruins remained for months a mystery to him.

The next move, then, was clearly Verona. Verona—the mere name was poetry—was Shakespeare.

Incidentally it was also the home of the di Monti. Which was more like duty.