Читать книгу Chief Inspector Pointer's Cases - 12 Golden Age Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding - Страница 30

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POINTER followed hard on di Monti's heels. Everybody summoned was present.

The Italian, after a derisive glance at Bellairs, who stared back at him like an angry cat, sat down at the place where his name lay.

Thornton alone seemed to have drunk from some fountain of youth since the previous meeting, though he shot a reproachful glance at the Chief Inspector.

As for Bond and Cockburn, they watched the proceedings with rapt attention again.

The colonel, looking ten years older, sat a little to one side, almost by himself. It was to him that Pointer first spoke.

"While the inspector is getting the mixture just right, I should like a word with you, sir. Kindly step this way." Pointer's tone was very frigid. Superintendent Harris and Inspector Rodman stared inscrutably at the inkstand before them. There had been something very official in Pointer's manner.

"By jove!" Bond muttered under his breath.

"Just so!" Cockburn replied. Di Monti bit his lip. Bellairs started to speak, then checked himself. Thornton took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Pointer led his captive—for Scarlett was practically that—into the farthest room.

"Now, sir, we may not know yet who killed Miss Rose, but we do know who did not. Among those who did not kill her, is your son, the commissioner. Mr. Reginald Scarlett had no more to do with his cousin's death than I."

Colonel Scarlett went red, then white, then a blotched red again. His features twitched.

"I suggest a whisky and soda," Pointer continued cheerily, placing them before the colonel, "while you're helping yourself, sir, I'll get to business. First of all, I'll tell you what we know, and then I'll ask a little further information. If I'm wrong on any point, please correct me as we go along."

The colonel sat silent, breathing fast.

"Your son, the Commissioner of Uganda, had a motor accident nearly three months ago now. That accident, coming on top of a bad head wound got in the war, brought on epileptic seizures. The Government, anxious to keep him if possible, sent him home secretly on sick leave, while he was given out as exploring around Tanganyika. I may say, that false report threw us off the track completely for a while. It was thought safer to leave you out of it, so Professor Charteris went to meet your son at Marseilles, putting his journey forward a couple of weeks. He travelled on with him to Genoa, where the commissioner was to undergo a sun cure at a helium establishment outside the town. He went there under his middle name of Sayce, and once, when an introduction was absolutely necessary, the professor introduced him by that name. The commissioner found that the sun cure, at Hotel Quisisana made him worse. He left suddenly on the Tuesday of the week in which his cousin was found dead. The doctors at Quisisana wired to a friend of yours in town, Sir Henry Carew, who was evidently in your confidence."

"All but at the end," the colonel said huskily.

"Sir Henry got the cable Wednesday, and sent the message down to you in a letter by his car. The Genoese doctors cabled—we had a copy, which is now destroyed—that they feared lest the young man who had left them before his cure had hardly begun, should develop homicidal tendencies."

The colonel nodded. He could not trust himself to speak of that awful cable even yet.

"He had told me that he didn't write to you. I talked with him yesterday in the nursing home, which he leaves to-morrow, as fit as ever. He says he felt too miserable to write to any one. I take it that you, here at home, were on the alert?"

"We took turns, Carew and I, watching for him at night. That was how I could play bridge on Thursday. Sir Henry was patrolling all the roads around Stillwater House till midnight. Then I took over. On the Wednesday we had reversed the hours."

"Yes, I thought that was about it." Pointer nodded to himself. "The commissioner got out at Barnet station on Thursday about ten; he was not recognised or noticed, and walked to Stillwater, hoping that the exercise would do him good. He must have got in unnoticed."

The colonel nodded. "If my son came across by Green Tree Farm, he would have been able to slip in through the orchard."

"He made for the summer house," Pointer went on, "and lay down in one of the bedrooms there, after finding that you were not in your study. There he fell asleep. What sound it was that woke him, he says he doesn't know, but it brought him up all standing, with a feeling that there was something wrong. And something wrong there was! It must have been his cousin's body that he heard striking the flags below his window."

The colonel drew in his breath with a hiss.

"He heard no cry," Pointer went on quickly, for the other was labouring under an almost intolerable strain, "but only the sound of steps running down from the top of the look-out."

"Thank God!" murmured the soldier, covering his face with his hands for a moment. "But then—however, that's for later. He heard no cry, you say? Thank God for that, too!"

"It was an instantaneous death, if ever there was one," Pointer assured him. "Your son opened his window, but the sky was overcast. He saw something rush past, below, bent double like a wild animal. And a wild, savage animal it was, true enough. He would have gone out to investigate, but just then came the sound of all your voices, as you went out after that shot."

"And I still don't understand that shot!" burst out Scarlett.

"Patience just a bit longer, sir. Being so ill, and weary after his walk, the commissioner lay down and fell asleep again at once. When he awoke the second time, it was half-past twelve. He remembered the steps running down the outside stairs, and the sudden rush past below. Curiosity, mingled with an odd sense of unease, he says, made him go out on to the flags. He stumbled headlong over Miss Charteris's body lying in a little pool of blood from the wound in her head where it had struck the edge of a flower-pot. That frightful shock brought on an attack. I confess when I think of some of the fancies those broken flower-pots gave rise to in my mind—"

Pointer shook his head. Then he went on, "You found him, colonel? How?"

"I heard him. Heard the noise he made. Don't ask me to describe the scene. I rushed into the dining-room for brandy. I wasn't sure that nothing could be done for Rose. That'll tell you how rattled I was! Mrs. Lane was awake and downstairs. She came to see if she could help. God bless that woman. I can't begin to tell what she was to me that night. It wasn't only what she did, but how she did it. She tried to bring Rose round, but by that time I had got my second wind. I knew a broken neck for what it was. Not only was Rose dead, but she had been dead a couple of hours or so when I found her—"

"What time?"

"Midnight almost exactly. I lifted Reggie into the summer house. He was unconscious, but I tied him up, in case he should come around before I had settled what to do."

"What did you tie him with?"

Scarlett had to think a moment.

"I went to my study for some rope I had there, but I had given it to the count. I had more of the same kind downstairs, however."

"Around some cases of Indian chutney?"

Scarlett nodded. He looked surprised.

"Then we put my poor niece's hat that we got from her bedroom on her head, as though she had been out, and added her sketching box. I cut away a strip of green paint on the back of her dress, and teased the place to make it look as though torn. Then," he gnawed his moustache for a moment, "then we rolled the poor girl up in my travelling rug, tied it top and bottom with the rest of the cord, lifted it on to a sort of carrier that happened to be standing on the flags, and Mrs. Lane put on Rose's shoes and walked down to the sand-pit behind me. Anything was better than having what we thought the truth suspected. Anything!"

"What dress did Mrs. Lane wear?"

"She had on a light dressing-gown when I saw her first. She changed it for something dark lying on the hall table—I don't know what, nor whose. She thought the stains wouldn't show on it. By the way,I wheeled Rose to the sand-pit. I suggested the place. Mrs. Lane did nothing but carry out my suggestions. Nothing whatever, Chief Inspector."

"Why did she take that fearful risk? I can see why you, sir, thinking your son had killed his cousin in a seizure, took it, but Mrs. Lane?"

The colonel did not reply for a moment. "Is this confidential?"

"About Mrs. Lane? Absolutely!"

"It will surprise you to learn that Mrs. Lane is really Mrs. Thornton. Her father was an old Eton chum of mine. She left Thornton for some woman's whim of his having married her for her money. I came on her later as a half-starved waitress in a bun-shop. Mrs. Lane is a proud woman. Thornton had been poor in those days and she rich. Now the position was reversed, she would have starved, or gone out altogether, rather than turn to him. But when I offered her the post of my lady-housekeeper she took it. I hoped it might bring them together again. For a time I thought it was no good, but I heard to-day from him that they're off for a year's cruise together next week. Mrs. Lane, to call her by her name in my house, has that rarest gift on earth—a grateful heart. She felt that she owed me something for giving her a post where she could keep in touch with her husband, and try to get him back. Not that I ever saw her try."

"I know," broke in Pointer, with his eye on the clock behind the other, "I thought that gratitude must be the key. Well, sir, you lifted the body on to the truck, and wheeled it to the sand-pit. Mrs. Lane walking behind, and helping to steer. You backed it under the trees of the copse, and carried the body down by the back shelving way, and left it in the pit?"

The colonel breathed hard

"God forgive me, yes. Horrible! But it seemed necessary. Mrs. Lane knelt and said a prayer before we left. Then we walked back by the main road. I wheeled the carrier to close behind the garage. Mrs. Lane crumpled up Rose's bed. Then we took my son, and the rug we had used for Rose, away in Thornton's big car, which Mrs. Lane got him to lend her without asking the reason. My own was too difficult to get out, with Wilkins sleeping overhead, and too noisy. Mrs. Lane blurred over the tracks we made in the lane in a little two-seater afterwards. We drove to a Doctor Bodley, who had suggested the Genoa sun cure and knew the whole story. He rang up Sir Martin Martineau's home, and arranged matters so that nothing should leak out. My boy's whole future was at stake. At least, we thought nothing had leaked out, but—"

"It didn't leak out! We only learnt what we know as the result of quite a bit of—eh—routine work," Pointer assured him.

"He had an operation," the colonel continued. "The surgeons found a splinter of steel from that old shell wound pressing on the brain. The motor accident had only aggravated it. He's as right as rain now, with no more chance of any trouble of that kind. But you know all this. You know the whole story. According to you, I shan't have to break his heart by telling him that he—" suddenly Colonel Scarlett's eyes fairly seemed to turn to glass. "There's no mistake?" he asked in a croaking, harsh voice. "There isn't a catch somewhere? You know Reggie is innocent?"

Pointer nodded. "I do, sir."

The colonel relaxed again. He sank back into his chair and drew a couple if deep breaths. That had been an awful moment just now, when he had wondered if this were a police trap.

"But who was the murderer? Who was it? Of course I know it was no tramp—but, for God's sake, who did it? Not—not the count?"

Pointer did not reply.

"And afterwards, sir?"

"We got back before any one was up, and spent the time making sure, as we thought, that no traces had been left. As early as I dared, I cut down the branches of the tree below the outlook where my poor niece had gone crashing through. They were badly broken. I gave out that I had had an accident with the ladder, but that no one was to do anything to the place until further orders."

There was a short silence.

"The difficulty will be," Pointer said slowly, and studying his boot-tips as though they might have a word to say on the subject, too, "the difficulty will be, how to keep all this part of it out of the trial. I don't mind telling you that the criminal is going to be arrested shortly. But about this moving of the body from the summer house—the chief commissioner thinks with me that we had better deny all knowledge of that. It's up to the murderer to prove who did shift the dead girl. It won't alter the verdict one way or another. I think I can go bail, that, without the help of Scotland Yard, no one will be able to get at the truth. So silence on your part, sir, is the best thing."

The colonel agreed forcefully.

"And now, sir, I'm sorry to tell you that Professor Charteris has met with an accident while in the Dolomites. The exact explanation comes into my fuller report, but I think you should know at once that you brother-in-law is dead."

The colonel was deeply shocked. He had had a hard time lately, and he was very fond of the professor.

"Climbing accident, I suppose," he muttered after some minutes, "and there, too—when he didn't turn up. I wondered if my poor son—that cable of the Genoese doctors terrified me, Pointer, as I've never been terrified before. You do hear of such things when it's a question of homicidal mania. That was why I had some Italian papers sent to me—to learn if—if—he stopped—"

"You took the letter of the professor's to his daughter that accompanied the enclosure, didn't you, sir?" Pointer prompted again.

"Yes. It was in Italian. I was nervy that nothing should leak out about Genoa. The professor has—had—the kindest heart in the world, but he was a dreadful chap to let things slip out. And Rose had a way of leaving her letters around. The word Genoa hit me in the eye. And I took it till I could have some one skim through it, and tell me if it were safe. I meant to get Sir Henry to just run it through for me, but he wasn't in. Then Mrs. Lane suggested that she could do it. She bought a dictionary in Medchester and worked it out on Thursday night in a restaurant near by. She only slipped into the concert hall at the very end. Of course, we intended to return the letter to my niece at once that was why the hurry—if there was nothing about my son in it. But next morning—I'm afraid I don't know what's become of that letter. Mrs. Lane doesn't remember what she did with it either—"

"And Miss Charteris's papers—you didn't take them, I suppose?"

"Take them? Surely the police took them. I went through them first, I confess, to see if any of my son's letters were there. He was a bit in love with my niece. That's why I pressed for the di Monti engagement before Reggie should come home on sick leave, before matters got so bad with his head that he had to go to that 'cure'. I didn't want a marriage between them. Cousins. Apart from—well, many things. I knew Bellairs wasn't a marrying man. But one thing did strike me, Pointer. There wasn't a line of her father's among her papers. I had put all his letters to me in my safe in the city when I went up to town that Friday, just in case of any reference to my son, but what became of his to her. I can't imagine."

Pointer could. He knew. He rose to his feet now.

"And Lady Maxwell? Why did you act the day of the funeral as though you—well—were disturbed by her presence?"

Colonel Scarlett flushed.

"Between ourselves, if a woman could marry a man against his will, I should be a re-married man. See?"

Pointer saw.

"Also I wasn't sure that she had heard or seen nothing that Thursday night."

"And Miss Scarlett, does she know?"

"Trust a mere girl with facts that could ruin her brother's whole future? My dear fellow, Sibella couldn't keep a secret to save her life! My only terror was lest she should guess, or had guessed, something of the truth. I was afraid she had. I suppose I can't ask how in the world you found it all out?"

"Just routine work, sir. I went wildly astray about those broken flower pots at first. You would have done much better to've confided in us from the start, though I will acknowledge that in this case the position was difficult for you."

"Difficult? It was damnable. But I still don't see how you got on to my son's presence in Europe, when the Nairobi papers reported his progress week by week around Mombassa."

"It was something I heard in town, after I got on the track of a man having been taken to the nursing home."

And the colonel never knew that it was the kiss that he had given Mrs. Lane which had first opened Pointer's eyes to the true, the only possible explanation.

A man does not kiss a woman with whom he is not in love, and Pointer was certain that there neither was, nor ever had been, any love between the colonel and his lady-housekeeper, because a man whom one, or both, has badly injured is safely in a nursing home. Gratitude alone, he thought, could explain that little scene. A sudden burst of gratitude for loyal help. Scarlett had no male relatives but his son. Granted it could be that son, which it apparently could not be, then all became coherent. The operation suggested brain trouble. That suggested some epileptic-like seizure, which explained the singular way the plants were broken, the lashing of arms and legs on the stone flags. Pointer attacked the apparent proof of the commissioner's presence in Uganda. Found he could pierce it, and had the facts worried out for him while he was in Italy. He had read the report in Paris. Now the last lap was in sight Pointer's heart beat quicker as he entered the middle room. The business of taking the imprints of each man's fists was done exactly as on the first day, except that there was no accident this time. The typewriters of the constables in the outer room drowned all possibility of talking, until Pointer sent out word, asking them to defer, their activities until later in the day. The two commissioners came in as they were finishing.

"They look excellently taken. How soon can you pour in the plaster?" the Assistant Commissioner asked. "This ought to help forward the case."

"It will settle it, sir," Pointer said quietly.

The Chief Commissioner affected surprise. As for the men, who were just preparing to leave, they started as though each had been shot.

"Yes, sir," Pointer repeated, "this will end the case."

"Suppose you tell us just how we stand at present," suggested the Commissioner. "Let's all sit down again and hear it."

Every one sat.

Watts, too, took a seat, after putting the plates on one side. He chose a chair in the centre of the doorway, and quietly locked the door. He had a civilian assistant this time, who bore the not uncommon name of O'Connor.

"The details'll come out later, sir," Pointer began, "but as we are at present, this is how the case runs. Miss Charteris had an engagement that Thursday evening with Mr. Bellairs in his studio. He was painting her portrait. Count di Monti had learnt of her visits, and arrived on the scene. Miss Charteris had been fetched by a friend, but the count and Mr. Bellairs quarrelled over her."

Both men looked as though they would like to break in, but Pointer's impassive, eye held them, while he passed on.

"The count, as an additional proof of her presence, took away a letter that Miss Charteris had left behind her by accident. It was the enclosure that her father had sent her in her letter of the afternoon. When Count di Monti learnt of the 'accident', as it was called, to her, he at once handed this letter to a friend's brother who was starting that same Friday morning for Italy. It was posted back from Milan to the professor's club. Miss Charteris missed it at once when she returned to her room, and went to the top of the summer house to speak to you about it, Mr. Bellairs. She had asked you to meet her there as soon as you could come. Evidently ten was the hour one or other of you set. I take it she had asked you to let her know how things had gone between you and Count di Monti. She was sure you would quarrel. You decided not to go."

A chuckle came from di Monti.

"I decided for him."

"Had you gone," Pointer still spoke to the artist, "you might have postponed, but you would not have changed the end. The murderer caught sight of her standing alone under the light of the electric lantern up above. He thought that she was there to hand on the enclosure. He switched off the light, ran up the stairs, possibly made some comment about the lamp being out of order, and then as she leant back, perhaps to look at it, an arm was thrust under her knees, and she was flung full force backwards on to the flags below, breaking her neck as she struck them, and cutting her head on a flower pot."

There was one collective gasp from the room.

"As far as we know, she didn't even cry out. Had she done so, and had it been heard, he would have been the first to shout for help, we may be sure, and rush down to see if anything could be done for her. But he would have taken her silver chain bag just the same. Either from the top, where she had dropped it, or from beside her—"

"The bag?" Scarlett said in a dazed voice

"The bag which had held the enclosed letter. Miss Charteris was murdered for the sake of something which, her father was believed, quite erroneously, to have sent her. And now I am sorry to say I have to tell you about another death. Professor Charteris was murdered, too. He was killed in Northern Italy, for the same reason that cost his daughter her life By sheer accident he was present when a so-called Bulgarian traveller was killed. But the man was not a Bulgarian. He was Neumann, the great secret leader of the Soviet spy system. On him was a paper in cipher giving the names of all the chief Bolshevik agents in Europe. As a matter of fact, the professor never saw that paper, or knew of its existence. But the men with Neumann knew that he had helped their friend into the hospital, saw him reading a similar slip of paper on the hospital steps, followed him, and killed him in a lonely valley, where they could rifle his pockets. In his letter-case they found the receipt for a registered letter sent off immediately after his visit to the hospital."

So still was the room that the ticking of the watch which each man wore could be heard.

"But to go back to Miss Charteris's murderer. He had received news that a paper had been sent her which must at all costs be intercepted, and at once. If she had read it, she, too, was to be killed. The professor, being one of the finest cipher readers in the world, might very likely have written her the real names which were hidden in that apparent Russian poem. I think the murderer asked her about that letter before he flung her over. Miss Charteris, very much upset by the evening's events, as we know from her maid, forgot, I think, that she had taken it out, and spoke of it as still there. In any case, he jumped to the conclusion that it was there, and that she had read it. Now, he has the bag, the girl is dead, but he has no letter. He feels sure, however, from what she had said, that nothing had been done with it. It will be in her room, and he must get it later. He notices, for the first time, that when he stooped far over the rail to watch her fall, he smeared green paint on the inside of each hand. Not enough to show when close, perhaps, but enough to have some very awkward questions asked, should her body be discovered at once, as it may be. When we saw the smudges left by the two hand-grips on that painted rail," Pointer identified himself with Harris and Rodman by a glance, "we realised that the murderer must have had some way of getting the marks off. Water wouldn't touch them, nor would mere wiping do. He could neither take the time to thoroughly clean his hands then, nor chance its not being noticed. He had to return immediately and go on with the game, or risk comment. Yes," in answer to the distended eyes fixed on him, "the murder was committed by 'dummy' in the few minutes during which a hand was being played at bridge that Thursday evening. That was why that shot was trumped up, and a false alarm given—"

And then the Assistant Commissioner jumped. He stumbled over some one's legs, the table was between him and his object, but he grappled fiercely for a second. But with a laugh which was like a neigh, Cockburn got the hand with the ring he wore to his mouth, and bit off the small black pearl. It cracked like a glass phial between his teeth.

"Too late, Pelham, and there's no power on earth can stop or alter the stuff I've taken. Surely you never thought you could hang me!"

The Assistant Commissioner took it hard. His face worked silently. As for Pointer, he had sprung to his feet, too, with Harris and Rodman. The Chief Inspector rapped out an oath as the apparent pearl crunched, and that was something no one there had ever heard him do before. Now he sat down with the bitter look of a man who sees the best part of what he has worked for torn from him.

He made a visible effort to be calm, however, and turned to Cockburn.

"I must caution you that anything—"

Cockburn rocked in ghastly merriment. "My good fellow, you don't understand. What do you suppose I had in this little pearl of mine? This mourning ring I've taken to wearing lately? Something for a headache? In an hour from now, to the minute, I shall fall asleep, and nothing you can do or try to do, will prevent me from drifting painlessly into oblivion. That being so, I'm quite ready to oblige with any information—"

"I caution you that it may be used against you."

"You do, oh most excellent policeman!" mocked Cockburn.

Suddenly Bond came to life. With a slack jaw and a whitening face he had been staring as if numbed by what had happened.

"Those Polish papers," he suddenly turned on the man beside him, "I ought to've guessed when I caught you with them! Give me his keys somebody; I wouldn't touch him with a barge-pole, and his confederates may have them already in their hands."

Snatching the keys from Watts, Bond fairly raced from the room. Watts relocked the door behind him.

"Dear me," Cockburn yawned, "Bond always is impetuous. And now, Pointer, would you like me to help you out? I'm afraid the cipher—"

"It was read at the Yard an hour after I got it safely home. But we knew it was you very early in the case. Who but you raised that cry of a rifle shot and spoke of poachers. Then changed it to a revolver shot when Miss Charteris's death was no longer looked on as an accideneny. Then once more, to twist the case still again to serve ends, as you thought, you changed it to the sound of burst tyre from Count di Monti's car. That sally-out all together gave you the chance you needed that night. This chance of cleaning your hands with petrol at the garage after rubbing them well into the earth, and on all the grass of the hedge banks. Even if a smear remained, it would be set down to the hunt in the dark. The leaves in Miss Charteris's hand showed that she was killed before it came on to rain. That fitted the time all right when you were in the garden. You egged Mr. Bond on to break into Stillwater House with you on the plea of looking for more of that cord which you had seen given to the count. What you wanted were Professor Charteris's letters. All of them. You had let yourself into Miss Rose's empty rooms that same Thursday night after you murdered her, and taken all the papers you could find which were in the Professor's writing. But the paper you thought he had sent her, the enclosure you had seen pulled out at the tea table, wasn't among them. So you had that tool of the Bolsheviks, Rebecca Apfelbaum, hunt for it in the Professor's rooms next morning on the chance that Miss Charteris had run up to town with it on Thursday evening after dinner. You got all her papers next evening, to make trebly sure, when you stepped in for a chat with the chief constable after dinner—to ask how he was getting on."

Cockburn turned on him. "So you set me on to ferreting out about di Monti's alibi being rotten, while you knew the truth all the time? I wish I'd guessed that—then." There was a sudden glint in the shallow, shifting colour of Cockburn's eyes like a mad dog's.

"It kept you from suspecting that we did know the truth," Pointer answered coldly.

"I spoofed you that night at Stillwater, anyway," Cockburn jeered, "whatever you may have found out later."

"Not a bit. I should have suspected you by that alone, if I hadn't done so already, from what Mr. Thornton told me of the alarm that no one else heard. Within an hour I had that little oil can of yours from the tools in your car. It held just the same oil as that with which Miss Charteris's door had been treated. Some Russian blend, I suppose. Anyway, we can't match it in England. Your bedroom door at Red Gates and her doors alone show it. A bad break that. You meant to kill her in her room that night—strangle her, I think—if no earlier chance came.

"And as for that matchbox, which would let you seem to prove where you hadn't been standing, when you strolled around the grounds as dummy—you dropped that Friday morning while walking about after breakfast with Mr. Thornton and Mr. Bond. It fell bottom side up. I found it quite dry, though the pattern on it would have held the slightest drop of rain. It was obviously dropped after that downpour, and when you knew about the sandpit. By bad luck, too, it had fallen on a starling's tracks made that morning earlier when he had been hunting for breakfast. Oh, we've been watching you for some time, but it was the lack of motive that we wanted to get hold of, and any possible accomplices. You had none. And as to the motive—that was supplied by finding your name on the cipher list as the British agent for distribution of Bolshevik funds. We've been hunting that agent for years. There's nothing this man can tell us, sir."

Pointer turned to the Assistant Commissioner. Cockburn broke in sharply.

"Not so fast, please. How am I supposed to have moved the body of Miss Charteris from the summer house? Forgive my curiosity, but as I shall not be able to learn the truth of that interesting, and I confess baffling, fact at the trial—"

Pointer looked bored.

"You had your arrangements made, I take it."

"I?" Cockburn stiffened. "I've just told you that knew nothing about it, and would like to hear the explanation. It was the count's doing, I'll swear, though why—"

"That's not the question," Pointer went on carelessly. "It's the motive for the crime that concerns us, not why she was moved when dead."

He turned again to the Commissioner for a moment, then back again to Cockburn.

"As I say, sir, we have the motive now. It was just sheer greed. Wanting more money. The love of secret power. Mr. Bond was getting into your debt. In time you intended to wring a very full payment out of him. I think he may be thankful indeed we caught you before that. As to your hostility to Count di Monti—that, course, is due to the count's anti-Communist activities. You sent him, however, a warning letter that I was coming to Italy to arrest him, in the hope that something would happen to me. You thought it might be as well to choke off the C.I.D. for a time."

"I was right. You have blundered on the truth," Cockburn said arrogantly. His gentle, pleasant mask was off now. It could no longer serve him.

"The only blunder in this story was the needless, useless murder down at Stillwater. I hope you realise that truth now. Had Miss Charteris not been killed, that letter-case with the incriminating letter in it would have been sent back to Sofia by the doctor, or the sister-in-charge, unread, unguessed at even."

"Miss Charteris misled me by her manner when I spoke to her in the summer house," Cockburn said sombrely. "She misled me completely, or this blunder, as you call it, would never have happened. I certainly have cause to regret it. But she spoke so wildly. I do not consider myself dull-witted, but I had to decide quickly for the best. I made sure she had received the de-coded list and had read it. So unfortunately—"

Pointer nodded to Harris, who clicked on the handcuffs with a quite unprofessional gleam of pleasure in his eyes. Cockburn glared around the room.

"So you won't spare me this last indignity? You want me to die in your beastly irons? But I've tricked you. In an hour I'm away from all this."

Harris propelled him, none too gently, to the door. They heard Cockburn's snarled injunction to him to keep his hands off a gentleman as it closed.

Di Monti was the first to throw off the spell, and rose to his feet.

"Do I understand that the game that has been played with me is now over?" he asked very politely. His voice was ice over a volcano.

"This wasn't some idea of getting even with you, Count di Monti. It was vitally necessary that Mr. Cockburn shouldn't suspect we suspected him. At the F.O. he could have laid his hands on any passport he liked. He was shadowed closely from the first by Inspector Watts, and relays of men from private investigation bureaus. And what about attempted murder?" Pointer spoke temperately but with inward warmth. "Think yourself lucky to have got off with no worse than a warning."

"Lucky!" Di Monti tossed him the word back contemptuously. "Lucky! In death, as in life, she brought me bad luck."

"You deserve a stiff term of imprisonment, Count di Monti," Pointer began tying up some papers before him "but though I'm a policeman, and say it, I think every man's punishment lies waiting for him, whether he get it by law or not."

It was almost as though Pointer could read the near future, could see a blazing plane crash, could watch the charred body of the airman lifted out on to hot Tunisian sand, and know it for what it was—di Monti's.

Without another glance at the room, the Italian stalked out. O'Connor closed the door behind him.

The Assistant Commissioner had paid no heed to the little scene.

"Yes, Cockburn's tricked us," he muttered in anguish after the others, still silent under the spell of what they had heard, had gone.

"He's done us, right enough, at the end. He'll die a nice, quiet death before the hour's over. Why the devil didn't you keep your feet under you, Pointer? It's not like you, of all men!"

"It's not as bad as you think, sir," Pointer interrupted tranquilly. "We noticed that Mr. Cockburn began wearing a ring just after Miss Charteris's death, so naturally, as a matter of routine, we had it examined that first time the casts of the hands were taken."

He did not explain that that was the sole reason for that performance. Even superiors need not know everything until the last day.

"The room was so tight, that the rings were put on that ledge behind there. A sliding panel had been cut in the back, and to-day, while the typewriters in the outer room clicked like hall-stones on a tin roof, the pearl that we had made was substituted for the other. Mr. Cockburn swallowed a small black ball of properly prepared flavoured soap enclosed in glass. When he discovers the truth, I shouldn't wonder if there was quite a storm scene."

And there was.