Читать книгу Chief Inspector Pointer's Cases - 12 Golden Age Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding - Страница 28

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POINTER had plenty to think about as he took the motor coach back to Bolzano that afternoon. So the professor was dead. He had half-feared as much these many days past, Charteris had sent off that letter to his daughter on the Monday, and had been killed the next day, while she was murdered the Thursday following, the day of its arrival in England. The Professor had not been attacked in the train before he got out at Bolzano, though the first-class coaches are usually quite empty so early in the year. It would have been an easy matter to knock him on the head and fling him out, en route. Much less troublesome and dangerous than to track him to that lonely valley.

Pointer believed that the guide's life had only been saved by his having gone on to that upper point. For the murderer came doubtless prepared with a revolver or gun to account for both, if need be.

Why was the professor's life suddenly in danger, when it seemed to have been safe up till then? Rose's murder, Pointer felt sure, was connected with the letter she had received. Could he link up her father's death with it? Not unless—unless something had happened in Bolzano which he might have been supposed to describe, or send on to her. They had pillaged his body. Were they looking for something which they expected he would have on him, and which, not finding, they assumed had been sent in the letter that he had registered to his daughter in England the day before? They must have found the receipt for the letter in his note-case.

In all likelihood, a message must have been sent to England, a telegram probably, telling her murderer to be on the lookout.

But what could have happened in the quaint little town to cause such a scheme to be necessary. Money? Inheritance? Something momentous it must have been.

Pointer did not doubt Toni's honesty. "Yes," he murmured to himself, "it looks as though something very important had happened that Monday in Bolzano before twelve, before the professor sent that registered letter, and took the postauto on to the Grödner Tal."

Pointer made his way to the Sotto Prefectura, and roamed its passages, and blundered in and out of its rooms, with as little attention paid him as though he had been a blue-bottle. At last, by mere luck, he found an elderly, pleasant-faced Italian, who looked up, and to his oft-repeated, "Il Sotto-Prefetto?" replied, "I myself. To what do I owe the honour?"

Pointer laid his credentials down on the table and explained them. The Italian looked them over very carefully, then rose and bowed, glanced at the collar lying beside him, evidently decided that decorations need not be worn, and bowed again as he sat down.

"I am over here to try to trace a much respected compatriot, a Professor Charteris, who we know passed through this part of the world a fortnight ago. I found his murdered body to-day."

The sub-prefect, who had been listening as one listens to foreigners, intent on letting no strangely pronounced word slip past him unrecognised, his hands pressed back to back between his knees, relaxed, to throw them out in horror.

"Murdered?"

"Murdered. Now the guide who led me to the body as soon as he heard the description of the man, was Ladiner Toni."

He told Toni's story very carefully, and the corroboration of the chamois hunter.

"They are children," the sotto-prefetto said, shaking his head, "but it has an ugly sound."

"It has, signore, but there is a private matter behind all this. His daughter was murdered on Thursday in England. He on the Tuesday morning, here in Tirol."

"Alto Adige," corrected the Italian official immediately.

"That was why Scotland Yard decided to hunt out the father—as a matter of routine," continued Pointer. Whenever he insisted on doing something in his own way, he referred to it as the Yard's doing, and himself, by inference, as the straw blown hither or thither by a higher power.

"Private affair? A vendetta?"

"We don't know. It's a very mysterious story altogether. But it would suit us to keep the fact that he has been murdered quiet for a while yet. If you could seal up that rock and leave him there—and let the matter rest awhile? It has nothing to do with Toni, that I'll stake my position on. There's an inheritance mixed up in the affair, and that may be at the bottom of the two murders. This part of the world is famous for its absence of crime—"

"Smugglers thick as flies on honey," murmured the sotto-prefetto, but he was pleased at the tribute.

"I was speaking of serious crimes, and it is only fair that the good name of Tir—the Alto Adige, should not be tarnished because of a crime undoubtedly unconnected with it. Connected quite certainly with the other affair. Now, could I see the charge-sheet for Monday morning?"

The papers were laid before him. Pointer learnt that on that Monday had taken place:

(1) A bicyclist fined for riding on a footpath.

(2) A pane of glass broken.

(3) A street accident.

It was not a hopeful-sounding list for two murders.

The broken pane of glass was in a cake shop. The criminals, two little boys. Remained the street accident.

A wealthy Bulgarian gentleman, a rose-grower of Kazanlik, had been run over by a runaway cart-horse. He had died at the hospital, or just before. His papers were all in order, and his body had been at once claimed and taken on home by his friends.

Pointer rose. This was his last hope. That gone, there remained only some chance meeting, some stray letter.

The Bulgarian had been taken to Bolzano's one hospital. Thither Pointer went and made further inquiries about this Mr. Drinoff.

The sister in charge, a quaint, tubby little person, in her ugly habit, looked up the records for him. They were very ordinary. The gentleman was dead when he got there, so he had been sent at once to the mortuary chapel. Some of his friends had arrived a little, later and claimed him, and after that—she did not know exact particulars. They had taken him back to Bulgaria eventually. If Pointer wanted dates, she could only refer him to Doctor Sanftl. He would know. He had hoped to save him at first, for the man was barely dead. What hour was this? just before dinner, about eleven, or possibly half-past. The sister's dinner was at twelve, and she had had a very sketchy one in consequence.

Had a friend come with him?

Not a friend, a kindly passer-by had come in. Another Bulgarian who spoke German very well.

"Was he by any chance tall, thin, and elderly?"

"Eben! Tall, thin, and elderly. Some sort of a professor, judging by his scholarly face."

She was quite sure he could not be English?

Put point-blank to her like that, the sister could only say that she had taken it for granted, being a foreigner, that he was also a Bulgarian, but she had no real grounds for that belief. Doctor Sanftl would know. Doctor Sanftl had talked to the gentleman a good deal.

Could Pointer see the doctor?

He was no longer at the hospital. He had left only a week ago and was now at the Mariahilf hospital in Innsbruck, but the gentleman could write.

He could, and he could also travel, and that by the next train, Pointer thought.

Doctor Sanftl had liked him immensely, that elderly foreigner, and had asked him to come again in the afternoon, he had something he wanted to show him, but the gentleman had to go on—some excursion he wanted to make, some ruins he wanted to see, if she remembered aright.

Pointer took the next train up the wild Brenner Pass and on to Innsbrück. Next morning he drove out to the hospital standing outside the town, all dreary and dirty in its summer gray.

"A friend of Professor Charteris, of the professor with the interesting views on chemical affinities? Gruss Gott!" The doctor shook hands warmly.

What could he do for the professor's friend? "Nothing, judging by your looks," he added, "though you've been worrying over something lately."

Pointer, who took all his cases very hard, was surprised at the big stout man's acumen.

Yes, he had been worrying—about the professor.

They had had no news of him since he had arrived in Bolzano. Was the doctor sure that the dead Bulgarian had been a stranger to the professor?

The doctor was quite sure.

"Where are my notes of the case—ah, I remember, they're at Bolzano."

"The sister said not."

"Which sister? Bright eyes, nose rather beaky?" Pointer-could not cope with this description in a foreign tongue, but he described her laboriously.

"Freilich! Freilich! That's the one. Well, she ought to know. Wonderfully accurate woman." The doctor thought hard, his hands deep in his long white overall. "I know! Of course! As the man was dead, my notes on his injuries were never asked for. I stuck them into my laboratory locker, and there they are still. I forgot to clear that out when I came on here." He suddenly flushed. "Alle welt noch 'mal! I do believe the man's letter-case is there, too. Oh, no money! But a couple of Bulgarian letters. I asked your friend to go over them for me in the afternoon, as he knew Bulgarian, but, as a matter of fact, we didn't need them. The man's passport and papers were at his hotel and all in perfect order.

"The professor could not come that afternoon, but he promised to look at them next morning. He was going out to the Grödner Tal. But he, too, forgot! Sister Fini did remind me of that locker, but I was in a bit of a rush at the last. I've the key still here." He dived into a pocket like a kit-bag. "No, not here. Here," he pulled open the table drawer, "here it is. I must send it back, and get them to send on the letter-case to its owner."

Pointer said that he was on his way back at once, and would hand the key over.

"Famos! That saves me a letter. Care to look over the wards?"

Pointer declined that treat, and caught the train. Sister Fini sniffed as she took the key.

"Just like him! He's a very clever doctor, but forgetful! I remember his putting down some one's name twice for the same operation. Here is the locker. The letter-case is your friend's, you say. If he left it behind him, and spoke of coming back in the afternoon, it would be just like Doctor Sanftl to drop it into his cupboard and never think of it again. It's not one he often goes to." She opened the locker. Pointer picked up at once a letter-case folded in three. Inside were a couple of business-looking letters. Otherwise it seemed empty. The letters had pictures and doubtless the name of some Bulgarian firm on both envelope and sheet. Sister Fini was pouncing on other treasure trove.

"My scissors! I knew he had them! I knew it! I only hope there was nothing of that poor dead gentleman's that got tossed in here, too." She peered around anxiously. "His friends were so sure that something had been lost or overlooked. We really had quite a scene with them. Doctor Sanftl isn't one to listen to that sort of suggestion calmly." She was peering into the cupboard. "No, there's nothing else except the doctor's own papers. They looked over the room upstairs—the room into which the body was taken, so I think we may be sure that nothing was left. They actually thought their friend might have been robbed while in the hospital! I told them that he had not been alone for a moment. First your friend, then the doctor, and then the orderlies who carried him off."

"They asked for my friend's name and address, didn't they?" Pointer spoke as though the doctor might have told him as much.

"Yes, they were so sorry to think that they had actually passed him by on the steps. They were hurrying in, thinking of the terrible accident, and your friend was reading some directions the doctor had written down for him about the new hours when the autocar leaves for the Grödner Tal. They would so have liked to thank him for his kindness. Well, I'm relieved that all is all right now." She beamed cheerily, and showed Pointer out.

The Scotland Yard man speculated on how much time would elapse before she would have spread the news of his friend's pocket-book. If he had been able to bribe an orderly in London, so could others here.

Sister Josephine had a carrying voice. And the pocketbook might be the key, might be the reason, the long-sought motive, behind this puzzling case.

Pointer leant back against his locked door at the hotel, and took out the letters, which were in Cyrillic characters. Feeling carefully, he found an inner, secret pocket, over whose mouth a band for stamps slipped. Inside this was a very thin sheet of paper covered with what looked like a poem in faint, fine writing. It, too, was in Russian characters.

Pointer's eyes glowed. The paper was the kind used for secret messages in all countries. Very fine and very tough, capable at need of being tied to a pigeon's wing or folded into a cigarette. If he was right, he had the treasure in his steady hands—the cause of two murders.

He returned it to its inner place, for, being in Russian characters, he dared not copy it, and the ink was too faint and blue for it to photograph well. At Scotland Yard are good interpreters. He must get this home to them at once.

The registered post was too uncertain; flying machines might arouse attention. He decided to carry it home by rail and boat, home to the best brains in England to decipher, and then, and then only, he would know the motive behind the double crime.

He would have liked to divine it before he learnt it. Vaguely something of the truth was filtering in even now, but he must wait. How long would he be allowed to keep his find? As long, he thought, as some one at the hospital would take to telephone, or he had misjudged the whole affair.

He turned, and walked slowly up and down in the Piazza Walther, pretending an interest in the minstrel's statue.

Supposing, he thought, that what was wanted was merely to put out of the way, to kill the owner, or supposed owner of that paper, he would not have a chance of reaching England alive. Not one. But, as he saw it, it was the paper, not his death in itself or by itself, which they wanted.

His death might be decreed, if he had read it, like the professor's death, like Rose Charteris's death, but the possession of the paper in each case had been and would be the primary objective.

Here lay his one chance of reaching home. For the murderer was obviously not working alone. Another hand had killed the father from that which had murdered the daughter. A third person might be put on duty in his case.

Pointer went to the post-office and wired to O'Connor.

IF WANTING A CHANGE, JOIN ME IN BOLZANO. BRING TOZER.

Tozer was O'Connor's name for his automatic. Pointer turned away feeling that he had taken out a very good insurance for the paper.

His room at the Laurin was between two others. He took another for his friend, and into that upper room he himself slipped late that evening, after arranging a bolster shape in his bed. Even so, he spent the night with his doors and windows securely wedged. Nor did he go downstairs until the house was well astir. Then he glanced into his own room. The threads of finest spider-silk that lie had stretched across door and windows were broken. The dummy was not as he had left it. The clothes on the chair were not precisely as he had laid them. So the hunt was up! His blood ran swifter for the thought. There is something in the human being that enjoys a chase, even in the form of the quarry.

Pointer loafed the morning in front of the café until his answer came, "O'Connor and I arriving Friday one thirty.—Tozer."

So by noon to-morrow he would have his friend and the paper its second guardian. O'Connor must have done some rapid packing. Until his arrival, Pointer decided to take an open-air cure. Bolzano was a dream of blue skies, with the beautiful, ever-changing green of the hills around it. Plum purple, the great ridge of the Mendel range, a snowy veil still hung over the Rosengarten, all around was the broad valley of the Isarco, the river that the Talfer joins under one of the bridges. All the way to Merano stretched a sea of fruit trees coming into blossom. The little town was gay as the South and busy as the North. Pointer could have stayed on gladly for the mere beauty of it. He took his lunch, not in the hotel, but in the little garden park, off rolls and cold meat that he himself purchased in the shops. The afternoon was spent outdoors in the one smart café of the place, and was followed by dinner on similar lines to the lunch. He used neither bedroom that night, but arranged for a very late bath, and made himself comfortable in the tub with a pillow and a feather duvet smuggled from his room. The bathroom looked out on to the same side as his own room. There were two men who spent the late evening hours watching the hotel from a house opposite. About midnight he saw some sort of a sign pass, by means of a white handkerchief, to others watching in the hotel itself, doubtless in his own room. Pointer would have liked nothing better than to step in suddenly, but at present he was not Pointer, but the warden of a thing at once a possible treasure and an expected revelation, and the rope which was to hang a murderer. The bathroom handle moved very softly. Besides being locked, there was a wedge under it, and Pointer only prodded the duvet into a more comfortable mattress as he listened intently. The bathroom had had a bell, but it was out of order, so the boots had told him.

Pointer had made it worth the night-porter's while to mend it. He had tried it just before "taking his tub," and had explained to the man, a conscientious but dull-witted Tiroler, that, being a poor sleeper, he had found that nothing helped him so much on a sleepless night as a cold dip. On a bad night he would sometimes have two, or three dips. By all the signs, this was going to be a bad night. So if he, Andreas, heard him, he was not to be surprised.

"But how about a cup of coffee?" suggested the man after "studying" things over for several minutes like a true Bozener, "I keep some standing hot all night."

"Good!" said Pointer. "A cup of coffee and a bath together would be splendid. If I ring from the bathroom, just set the cup down outside."

Andreas said he would, and departed.

Pointer thought this an excellent time for that cup as he listened to the faint stirs and breathings outside. If only Andreas's step were not first cousin to a carpet-beater's thud! But at night Andreas evidently put on list shoes, for there was a sudden exclamation and a scurry from the quiet over-timers outside the door, and a scandalised "Nanu!" from Andreas. A tray was put hastily down, and Pointer opened the door. His bedroom was close by. He dropped pillow and "divvy" into it, and stepped back to examine the bathroom door. Like all the rooms in the hotel, it had the dangerous Continental double door, one a foot or two within the other, so that a thief need only open and close the outer door to be in a small lobby, where he can work unnoticed.

Pointer flashed his torch over the hinges. One was already half-eaten through with acid. He waited for Andreas.

"What was wrong?" Pointer asked. "Bring the coffee to my room."

Andreas shook his head with a tolerant grin.

"A bit fuddled. Gentlemen will have their joke. Two friends of yours intended to help you with your dip. They couldn't find the handle, however, and must have been trying to unbolt the hinges when I arrived."

Pointer laughed and offered him a cigar.

"Which of the lot was that?"

"I don't know their names. It's the two Fascisti who have numbers seventeen and eighteen."

"Fascisti?"

"Well, they looked it."

"Get me their names from the book, will you."

Andreas brought him back a chit, on which he had scrawled, "Signor Gregorio Massa and Signor Antonio Massa."

"As I thought!" Pointer beamed. "Just the fellows, to try on a joke like that. Are they in their rooms now?"

The night-porter thought that they were. He had only caught sight of the door being closed. A final tip changed hands, and Pointer was alone.

After a little interval he crept out and along the passage to the numbers given. He heard two men's voices in seventeen. Not very pleased voices either. One was very low, but every now and then one would be raised hysterically, to be instantly quieted by a sharp low word from his companion. Pointer caught one such higher pitched word. It was a name. After it came a sudden pause, a pause of consternation. Pointer could almost visualise a hand clapped over a garrulous mouth. He was no longer near the door when it was noiselessly opened, but was well away on the upper landing. Lying down at full length, he saw a tall figure, its loose top-locks falling around it like a feather duster, search the lower corridor from end to end, noiseless in its movements as a horse-fly. Then it disappeared, and the door was shut without a sound.

Pointer felt like a dog hot on a scent and suddenly pulled up. One word he had heard, one name. Well he knew now, and he realised his danger.

Friday morning was spent like its predecessor, except for a telegram to di Monti appointing next Tuesday afternoon without fail for a meeting in New Scotland Yard and by noon Pointer was shaking hands with the tall lean figure of O'Connor on the Bozen platform.

"So our long-planned walking tour is coming of last?"

"It is," Pointer agreed "We begin it by taking train for Verona in an hour. Where's your bag; this man can carry it too."

Pointer had come accompanied by one of the town luggage-carriers, so as not to chance being alone on platform or in waiting-room So far, there had been no need of this precaution, but he had not cared to omit it.

"My bag? Tozer wouldn't let me wait to pack. And how's yourself?"

Pointer breathed in his ear.

"I've a pocket-book strapped to me, with a paper inside, which we must get home to the Yard. It'll clear the air."

"You're right, she's an uncommonly pretty girl," O'Connor agreed aloud, as lighting a cigarette and whirling on one heel to throw away the match, all in one swift motion, he almost burnt the tie of a man behind. The man, a typical Fascist by his hair and tightly-buttoned black shirt and thick, cudgel-like stick which he carried, hurried on.

Pointer, opened and shut his eyes as though saying, "Even so!"

"Brother Massa," he murmured. "He's off for the ticket office. Now, you get some food inside yourself, while I take our seats in the carriage that's put on here."

"Can you manage your luggage alone?" O'Connor asked cautiously.

"Can do," Pointer reassured him. O'Connor stepped into the buffet.

The usual change had come over the platform. A moment ago all was bustle; now it was almost deserted. Pointer had told his man what seats he wanted. The porter stepped in with the suitcase. In swinging it up, it caught in the curtain and almost overpowered him, for it was very heavy. Pointer made no move to assist. He stood well out on the platform.

Suddenly something knocked his feet from under him. A bag carried by another traveller had skidded from some three yards away. The man rushed up with apologies, in his hand the rubber-covered club of the Fascisti, the Italian sandbag. Pointer dodged the club and shot out his right with all the strength of his back behind it. The man who had had the accident with the bag sagged inertly forward. Pointer was on his feet now, and directing a kick at the shins of the porter, who had leapt out of the compartment. Pointer was not sure whether he were in the affair or not, but he could not afford to take a chance. The way the man acted cleared up his doubts. Instead of a volley of abuse, and calls to his mates, he picked up his Facchino cap and dived under the coach, just as an official from another platform hurried up.

"Ola! Cosa é?"

"Apparently this man has had a fit," Pointer answered in his careful Italian. "His bag slipped from his hand and knocked me down, too."

The man bent over the silent figure. He saw the black neck scarf, the hair, the rubber club.

"Take the man to the ambulance-room. Tell the Commandante about him. As for you, sir, you will be detained till he is able to tell us what happened."

"Can I telephone to your Sotto-prefetto?" asked Pointer.

A couple of Carabinieri who had strolled up said something to the station official. They evidently knew all about Pointer, for the Italian saluted at once.

"My excuses. I could not know. Nowadays one has to be careful, and he looked as though he had had a hard blow, on the point of the chin, too."

"Indeed! I took it for granted it was a fit."

"A very sensible view to take," the Italian said, with a rather dry smile as he passed on.

At Verona the two friends caught the Milan-Paris express, and settled themselves for the night in an empty first. They decided not to risk a sleeping car. Pointer was to stay awake the first part of the night, the Irishman relieving him after a rest.

Pointer was on the alert. He felt sure that further attempts would be made. He slipped back the two catches of the door opposite the corridor and wedged it with a cake of soap so that it looked shut, but would open at a touch.

"Just in case we need to slip out of the back-door in a hurry," he explained.

O'Connor nodded, and turned over, closing his eyes. The door of the corridor opened not long afterwards.

"Favorisca, i biglietti!" intoned a voice in the ticket-collector's usual sing-song. As usual, too, the man was accompanied by a second, who closed the door behind him.

Now Pointer had noticed a man stroll twice past the compartment at Verona. He had a bright brass eyelet shining from his black boot. When the man in the long coat and braided cap of the conductor slid open the door, Pointer's eye was upon a similar brass eyelet in his right boot. He roused O'Connor with the danger signal of "Wake up, Tozer!" But a mistake either way would be awkward. With his left hand he slipped the tickets along the seat, the next second he caught the sham ticket-collector's wrist in a vice that sent the knife to the floor. Then they grappled. The man was a big, sinewy chap, strong as a conger eel and almost as difficult to hold. O'Connor was dealing with his companion, but he, too, was having his work cut out. Though the Englishmen did not know it, they were struggling with a couple of the most dreaded of the Naples Maffei, killers by trade, with lists of victims as long as their own arms. They fought like savages. Pointer's allotment always trying with his thumbs for the other's eyes, his teeth snapping at his throat. If Pointer and O'Connor were both well up in jiu-jitsu, these men had similar tricks handed down from the Moors of Sicily, and used by Neapolitan criminals for centuries. But there was one thing that the Englishman knew, and their assailants did not, and that was about the door. With a wrench, Pointer managed to slew his man around, and fling him against it. The Italian went hurtling out. O'Connor's man struggled desperately, but they heaved him after his friend. Then Pointer pulled the chain. He did not want the two men to possibly crawl away to safety.

The express did not stop, but the guard, the ticket collector—the real one—and the soldier who generally accompanies Italian expresses, rushed up to the corridor door.

"Two men came in just now, one wearing a ticket collector's cap and coat," Pointer explained "They attacked my friend and me. In our struggle the door catches must have given way. The door flew open, and the man fell on the line. I pulled the signal at once."

"The catches are in perfect order," the conductor said trying them, "and very stiff. One goes up, the other down. If the door opened, it was opened. And how could two men fall out? The affair will be inquired into thoroughly. And how about thy cap and coat?" The guard turned to the ticket collector.

That official's story was that taking them off to enjoy his supper more at his ease, he had hung them on a nail outside the compartment. He had just discovered their absence when the alarm signal was pulled.

Pointer felt sure that he could have got him twisted up in his own statements in no time, had his Italian been as his English. What he felt sure had happened was a bribe, unless the man belonged to the same organisation. The soldier was left to guard the compartment, bayonet fixed, "in case of any more accidents," as the conductor said grimly. Pointer resolutely refused to show his papers, and he and O'Connor were marched off at once on arrival at Milan to the chief of the station police's room.

When the short stop of the express was nearly over, two figures dressed in Pointer and O'Connor's travelling coats and caps got into their compartment, but as the train started they strolled down to the end and dropped off with the ease of railwaymen. Pointer had decided to wait over a train. Being a night express, their absence might not be noticed, for the officials on the train were instructed to keep their compartment locked, and the blinds drawn after the two temporary substitutes had left. As for Pointer and his friend, they spent the night in the apologetic station-master's office, which he put at their disposal, together with his dog Wolf. When they unobtrusively slipped into the buffet early next morning for a cup of coffee, and some of Milan's famous panetone, they were told of an accident which had happened to last night's express. It was a singular accident, too. Just after the frontier tunnel was left behind, the express ran past a goods' train between two Swiss stations. A slight shock was felt, and the whole side of a first-class coach was ripped open, as though by something suddenly protruded from the goods' train. Only one coach was damaged. It was the one in which the two Englishmen had been sitting. All the occupants in it were severely injured, one man being killed. The express was delayed at the next station, where the injured were attended to by some doctors who happened to be waiting at the station for another train.

"'Happened to be waiting,' is good," was Pointer's only comment to his friend, when they took their seats next morning in an empty carriage. They were joined by other travelers who now got in, now got out, till they were left at Lausanne with a quiet, ill-looking young man, and a doctor, his anxious, attentive companion. They were French, and judging by his talk, the younger man was a consumptive back from a "cure" in the mountains which had not cured. He fell into an uneasy slumber after the train started on again, tossing and turning. Pointer and O'Connor occupied the two middle seats. The least comfortable, but the safest. Should the window seats be taken, they had arranged to stand in the corridor.

During the war, O'Connor had come across an eye-signal language hailing from America. He and Pointer had practised it, and changed it, till they were masters of its capabilities. It was undetectable.

Pointer occasionally glanced up from the paper which he was reading, generally looking out of the window, but sometimes at O'Connor, and sometimes at his fellow-travellers. O'Connor was equally at his ease. But they were talking hard, and this is what they were saying to each other:

Pointer: "The right hand of the young man beside me seems to get more and more out of sight. Watch it."

O'Connor: "I am. His companion's feet beside me look a bit braced. How about it?"

Pointer: "When you see that right arm move forward again, give a sniff and duck. You're right. His companion next you is getting ready for a jump. I'll tackle his feet if he does."

O'Connor: "And I'll see to—"

Pointer and he ducked simultaneously. A shot rang out. The young man with a wild white face was shouting, "Tirez! Tirez donc! Passeront pas! Passeront pas!"

The shot would have gone through Pointer's head from ear to ear had that essential part of his body been where it was expected to be, instead of down near his boots.

It was charming to see how Pointer and O'Connor worked together. Never getting in each other's way, however cramped the space. Like the swing of a couple of navvies' hammers, what Thornton insisted on in life and in art, rhythm and harmony were never lost sight of. First, Pointer pulled the feet from under the pale young man. O'Connor did the same with the young man's companion. Pointer laid his kicking and screaming captive on top of O'Connor's, where they started pummelling each other. O'Connor sat on their chests, Pointer on their feet, while the occupants of the other compartments flocked to the door and tried to pull it open.

"Third party locked it when he stood with his back to us just now. Look out for him," Pointer warned.

But it was the genuine conductor who unlocked it with loud requests to know the meaning of this.

"Passeront pas! Passeront pas!" shrieked the young man, trying to get his revolver.

"Without doubt wounded in the war, and not recovered even yet!" murmured sympathetic voices in the corridor.

"Possibly," Pointer said, getting up, "but he swore in another tongue altogether when his friend kicked him in the eye just now."

"Here, don't claw down me socks like that," O'Connor protested indignantly; "where's your manners." He gave the young man a tap as he only sat the harder.

"Why this treatment?" shrieked the man used as a mattress by all the three. "I am this gentleman's medical attendant. I cannot understand—I demand explanations, and—"

"Reparations," added O'Connor under his breath. Three railway officials freed the under-dog. Pointer spoke to him reproachfully.

"But, monsieur, your patient would have shot you! My friend and I saved your life. In the mêlée it was a little difficult, I own, to distinguish friend from foe."

The younger man was led away. The elder, literally foaming at the mouth, was helped to his feet.

Pointer and O'Connor strolled into another compartment, and roared with delight as they reconstructed the scene.

When the time came for lunch, they had only two Englishwomen with them, of the usual badly-dressed, over-smiling, over-toothed kind that seems to live exclusively abroad.

"First service!" bawled the dining-car attendant. "First service!"

"Are you going?" asked one of the ladies of the other.

"I think not, dear; I've something here with me." She patted a little wicker case, and after the other had passed out, spread a napkin and took out some rolls and a thermos flask.

Pointer and O'Connor were smoking in the corridor.

The lady inside leant out and asked if one of them would be so kind as to close the window for her, she found it too hard to lift. It was a very stiff window. O'Connor entered to help her, while Pointer stood looking on, not suspicious, but watchful. The woman bent forward again and said something to the Scotland Yard man, picking up her thermos flask and a little glass as she did so.

He did not catch what she said, and leant down. As he bent, her fingers tightened around the flask which was in the hand nearest him. He had already noticed that she held it under the bottom. Her forearm muscles stiffened, too. Pointer's one hand held the strap of the door, his other jogged her elbow, the elbow nearest him. Jogged it accurately. Not so hard as to deluge her with the contents, but sufficient to let him have an idea of what the thermos held. A straw-coloured liquid spurted up, a couple of drops touching her cheek. She shrieked, and rising, would have flung the contents wildly at him. A sharp tap from O'Connor lamed her arm, and the bottle fell on the floor, the liquid running over her very stout boots. A little must have penetrated the eyelet holes, for she screamed horribly as she tried to tear off boots and stockings.

Once more their compartment became the scene of the day. People crowded into the corridor. The guard again appeared at the double, together with the ticket collector, and demanded to know what was wrong now.

The woman in the compartment had her feet bare by now, swinging them to and fro over the liquid which was smoking where it bit its way into the floor. She was moaning like some tortured animal as she dabbed frantically at her feet and cheek, all three of which were enormously swollen, and pitted with horrible-looking, white-lipped holes.

O'Connor stood by the window and Pointer held the door. She had twice tried to claw her way out.

Now he had been especially recommended in his true character to the Frenchmen by the guards of the Swiss stretch, who had received their instructions from the Milan railway officials. They knew that he was carrying important papers. There was no difficulty, therefore, as far as they were concerned. The woman was carried into some remote, inaccessible part of the tram, medical aid was fetched, and order once more reigned. It was given out that she had cut herself in some way with her thermos flask lining, and that her screams were not to be taken too seriously. The other woman would have been arrested had they been able to find her, but she was apparently not on the train.

"Changed into a young man, who would have posed as a doctor in all likelihood, and kindly done his very best for me, and for you, too. There was plenty for both of us in that flask. Then she'd have turned into a dear old lady, and been helped off by the guard himself," was Pointer's forecast of what might have been had things gone according to plan.

A tanned, pleasant-looking, gray-haired Englishman standing before his compartment a little farther down eyed them with a humorous half-smile.

"You seem to make a most efficient storm-centre, you two," he said; sauntering up to them. "I was in the train to Milan yesterday."

"It appears that I have an unfortunate likeness to some one who seems to be rather unpopular." Pointer spoke with heat, in the tone of an outraged Briton who is already composing his letter to the Press. "Member of some secret society which he's betrayed, so I'm told."

He declined the offer of a cigar, and lit his pipe. O'Connor did the same. Pointer had noticed the man, a typical army officer of the old school, travelling over the Brenner yesterday with a gunnery instructor known to him by sight, from Chatham.

"I suggest that you take refuge in my compartment till we get to Paris, if you want seats. I spend most of my time in the corridor." The man cleared off some of his belongings hospitably.

Pointer and O'Connor spent some pleasant hours chatting with him. He was on his way home from India, and had some inside information of the real currents under the surface out there.