Читать книгу Chief Inspector Pointer's Cases - 12 Golden Age Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding - Страница 39

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THE pace of an investigation is a variable tempo. Impossible to foresee. Some little detail, unimportant, never "mentioned in despatches," may take days. Some great step be covered in one stride.

Pointer had hardly finished making a few arrangements for trailing some of the characters in the little circle concerned so far, however vaguely, with Mrs. Tangye's death, when Haviland rang up.

"We've located one of the missing bank-notes, sir. It was paid in as part of a first-class ticket on a Royal Mail boat going to South America. Paid in by a young man of the name of Vardon."

"Vardon? Christian name?"

"Philip. Never heard of him before."

Pointer had. He opened a stand in one corner. Ran a finger over the cards, and presently drew out some papers. From these he extricated one, and glanced at it. It was a sort of genealogical tree of the Tangyes, the Branscombes, and the Headlys, as far as concerned the present generation. Philip Vardon was marked as the only living relative, bar the sister, of Mrs. Tangye's first husband, Clive Branscombe. He was the architect's cousin, and would now be about thirty-four. Apparently he was unmarried.

"That makes him a sort of cousin to Mrs. Tangye, in fact," Haviland noted at the other end. "The address the shipping office gives us is in Fulham."

"You'd better go there at once. I'm due at the Home Office. There can be no question of telephoning to me there. You'll have to handle Vardon yourself. Act on your own responsibility. Meanwhile, not a word to Tangye. There's something twisted about that money—and those keys."

Pointer reached for another telephone, and was connected at once.

The steamship company repeated what Haviland had just told him along the private wire from his station, but in more detail. Before they had closed last Tuesday about a quarter to seven, a first-class ticket to Puntas Arenas in Patagonia, had been sold to a Mr. Vardon, on a boat due to sail next Saturday. Two days off yet. He had crossed with them before, he said, nearly a year ago, on his coming to England from the same port.

"What class had he gone then?"

After some time Pointer got the reply that Vardon had come home second-class. Did they know his profession? He was an artist.

The Chief Inspector's further questions drew out the fact that Vardon had been in only a week ago, talking of going back steerage. Also that when he had dashed in late on Tuesday evening, he had seemed tremendously excited. The clerk at first thought that he had been drinking.

Haviland, with his Inspector, rushed up to the dingy apartments in Fulham. Only to learn that Vardon had left there late Tuesday night. He had come home about eleven, packed in a great hurry, and taxied his luggage to an hotel nearer the docks. The manageress was not surprised at the haste. Her lodger's month was just up, and as the rooms would have had to be taken for another four weeks, she had quite agreed with Vardon that there was no need for that expense, seeing that he had made up his mind to return to South America by the next boat.

She gave the young man an excellent character in every way. He had had two garrets called a suite for nearly a year now. Evidently his means were narrow, but she had no complaint about unpaid or dilatory bills.

As Haviland represented himself as a business man who had an appointment with Vardon, and might be coming in with him on a venture, he asked, and got, the name of the hotel to which the young man had gone.

Here again, Haviland was just too late. A Mr. Vardon had arrived last Tuesday, or rather early yesterday morning, it was past midnight—but he had not liked the room assigned him, and had gone to another hotel.

Which one? The hall porter could not say. As Haviland learnt that the man had taken his own luggage, and done without a cab, he tried the nearest. There was a certain brevity and ascerbity in the porter's tone that made Haviland wonder just what had happened, but he had no time to waste. In the second hotel he was told that a man of that name was stopping there till Saturday, when he was leaving by one of the Royal Mail steamers. Haviland sent up his card, an unofficial card. Could Mr. Vardon spare him a few minutes in private?

A slender, dark-eyed young man with a pleasant, rather gentle face, looking much under his real age, came down into the empty smoking-room at once.

"It's about Mrs. Tangye—" began Haviland.

Vardon stared. "She's not here."

The two police officers in plain clothes stared in their turn. "Mrs. Tangye's dead. She was buried an hour ago," Haviland said after a pause.

"What?" Vardon certainly looked horrified, incredulous, amazement. "Mrs. Tangye buried?"

"Didn't you read of the case in the papers, sir?" Haviland asked. He pointed to one lying on the couch beside him. "Here's the whole story, and a bit more—for about the third time in The Flashlight."

Vardon snatched at it, and seemed to read it through breathlessly from beginning to end. It was an account of the funeral, and a last dishing up of the manner of her death.

"What an awful thing!" he dropped it to the floor and faced them with his eyes still distended. "I never even glanced at a sheet yesterday or to-day. Been too busy. And to think I heard the newsboys calling out 'Twickenham Inquest' yesterday, and never even stopped to buy a copy."

"Too busy?" Haviland repeated questioningly.

"I'm off to Patagonia day after to-morrow. Decided rather suddenly to return. Takes some work to get your things on board at such short notice."

Vardon picked up the paper again, and again seemed to read the column through, shaking his head here and there.

"What a shocking fatality! I must telephone at once—" he began. Then he seemed to really see the two strangers for the first time since one of them had handed him the paper.

"And may I ask to whom I'm talking? To what I owe this call?"

"It's about your ticket, sir." Haviland said slowly, "about one of the notes you paid for it. Where did you get them?"

"Is there something wrong with the notes? Do you mean that they're bad?" Vardon's face whitened. "Then I can't—what do you mean?" he finished hurriedly.

"Do you mind telling us where you got them? I'm afraid it's rather a serious business."

"In what way? Mrs. Tangye, the lady whose dreadful death is in that paper, gave me them last Tuesday afternoon—day before yesterday in my rooms at Fulham. The very afternoon on which it seems that she shot herself. She's backing me in a new venture of mine. But for God's sake, don't tell me these notes are no good! Why, I've cabled my partner! If I've let him in for—"

"They're genuine enough, as far as we know, sir. There's nothing of that kind the matter, I believe. Mrs. Tangye's executors couldn't account for their whereabouts, and we've been asked to trace them. I suppose you have some agreement, something in writing?"

"Naturally I have. I should rather think so! It's upstairs. I'll fetch it. I take it you are from her solicitors?"

"That's it, sir," Haviland nodded.

Left alone, the two police officers relaxed their tension. Vardon had made a good impression. Five minutes went by.

"Better go on up and lend a hand, Brown," Haviland suggested to the Inspector. "He looks to me like a chap who would need help with his packing."

A moment later a stony-faced Brown slipped in again, and holding the door shut behind him, gasped: "He's bolted!"

"Impossible!" Haviland sprinted up beside the other as though he had some infallible recipe for collecting the absent.

But Vardon had gone. He had walked out of the hotel immediately with his suitcase, nodded rather breathlessly to the hall porter, turned a corner, and vanished. As all rooms were pre-paid no one had spoken to him.

The two police officers said little. There are some things for which speech is too limited.

"He fits everything!" Haviland said tensely, as very white about the gills, he reported what had happened to Pointer later in the afternoon. Haviland had cause to look pale. Scotland Yard does not tolerate many blunders. But Pointer knew only one unpardonable offence. That was untrustworthiness.

"Yes, sir! He fits in right enough."

Haviland waited miserably for compliments on his brilliant handling of the case. None came.

"Shall I get out a warrant for his arrest?" he ventured to ask, very much doubting whether he would be entrusted with it. "Though he's sure to make for abroad. An artist must know many a port where he can lie hid. South America, too!"

There was still another painful point for Haviland to trot out.

"He owns some sort of a box-camera. So they told me at his rooms in Fulham. It isn't with the suitcase, nor yet with the luggage he's sent to the boat."

Pointer sat awhile thinking.

"Got your car below? Good. I'll speak to Wilmot over the 'phone," he did so, telling him briefly of what had happened, and asking him to wait for Haviland who would bring him back to the Yard in his police "non-stoppable."

When Wilmot arrived, Pointer suggested a line of action on the part of the newspaper man, to which Wilmot consented after a little pressing.

Then Pointer turned to Haviland, and sketched to that slowly-reviving officer, how and where the next step should be taken.

Pointer himself was just back not only from the "breakfast" but from Mrs. Tangye's funeral. It had been a more than usually melancholy affair. The knowledge that Scotland Yard was in some way concerning itself with her death made the wildest rumours run.

While there, however he had met a lady who had travelled up with Mrs. Tangye on her return from Tunbridge Wells. By chance getting into the same compartment at Ashford. She had found Mrs. Tangye suffering from a bad headache. Mrs. Tangye had referred to the orchids, and said that the heat had been too much for her. She had sat with closed eyes apparently suffering very much, till they reached town, where she had refused her companion's offer of a lift in her car, and had taken a taxi.

So Pointer's doubts were solved as to whether whatever it was that had caused what he called the cleavage in Mrs. Tangye's life, had taken place at or after Tunbridge.

If it had taken place on Sunday at all, it had apparently been while with Miss Eden.

Pointer's eyes were on that young woman a good deal during the funeral. She avoided Tangye. He avoided her.

At the funeral too, Pointer had met Philpotts the Rugby farmer. He looked an honest, elderly man. Philpotts scoffed at the idea of Mrs. Tangye having had any intention of going where pounds, shillings, or even pence, mean nothing.

"She gave way on the fences, but she stuck to her point about the timber," he repeated several times, half admiringly, half grudgingly. Pointer had brought the talk around again to Mrs. Tangye. The farmer's knowledge of her early days added nothing new, any more than did his few recollections of her cousin. Philpotts's own alibi of Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, which Pointer obtained by many indirect turns of the talk, was unverifiable.

Sunday afternoon he claimed to have spent with his wife in Westminster Abbey. The same time on Monday had been earmarked for the National Gallery, and Tuesday, after four, had seen them either gazing at the shops, or in one of the large tea-rooms where identification is impossible.

"It's queer," Pointer said now, when talking him over with Haviland and Wilmot, after he had finished detailing his plan about Vardon, "how few of the people connected with Mrs. Tangye can be located last Tuesday between four and six. Mrs. Bligh, is so far, the sole person who is definitely vouched for by several, unbiased, witnesses. She really did play bridge at her club from before four until after six."

"What would you have?" Wilmot asked raising an eyebrow. "How many more points do you want to prove that there's no crime here? By the way, how about the man you sent down to Tunbridge with the family portrait-album?"

"Which unfortunately did not contain a picture of Oliver Headly. There seems to be none extant of him. But Watts has just reported. No one in the show itself can identify any of the faces. There was a huge crowd on Sunday. Some minor royalty present. But outside, just by the gates, he found a tobacconist who recognised Tangye as having bought a box of vestas from him in the early afternoon last Sunday. That's our only haul."

"Vardon fits everything," Haviland repeated sombrely. He refused to be either comforted, or diverted. "When he said he had an agreement in writing, I ought to've suspected something. After what you said! But he seemed so straightforward. Yet, I shouldn't wonder—"

And Haviland proceeded gaily to sketch a long-ago flirtation, a meeting after many years, a planned elopement, the sale of the farm, and a murder when he found that the woman insisted on accompanying her funds.

Wilmot listened. Now blowing hot, now cold, as was his way. He called it the impartial poise.

"You may be right all along the line, Haviland," Pointer said finally when appealed to as umpire, "but—so far—there's no reason known to us why Vardon shouldn't have come to the front door. In other words, he fits the preparations, but Oliver fits the French window."

"Front door! Back door!" Wilmot suppressed a yawn; "wouldn't any murderer have come to the French window?"

"My point is that Mrs. Tangye wouldn't have expected him to come that way," Pointer said rather dryly. "It's not a case of a house-breaker's murder, but of a carefully prepared plan, and of some one whom Mrs. Tangye invites—expects—that way."

"There's a door into and out of the smoking-room, we've just learnt. Wouldn't that be a more usual way of unnoticed entry than by a window? Your whole theory hangs on those windows, which were found closed remember."

"That Miss Saunders said she found closed. The smoking-room cupboard door has a Yale lock. Tangye has the only known key. Any one using it would have have had to cross the central hall to get at Mrs. Tangye. And Florence was on the alert."

There was a pause.

"The fact is, I've had another thought," Haviland said so impressively that his two hearers smiled, "of the man who bought the farm. Philpotts. He's an old acquaintance. He would know about the money. What about Philpotts as the gent of the footsteps the two girls heard? The farmer's sure to walk stiff with rheumatism."

"Why should he go to the French window rather than to the front door?"

"My dear chap, don't let a little thing like that stump you."

Wilmot begged. "I repeat that obviously a man, or woman, with a criminal intent, would prefer to come, and above all to go, as unobtrusively as possible."

"Yes, but I repeat my question. The answer to which is the answer, I believe, to our whole riddle. Why should Mrs. Tangye aid him by lending herself to that entrance? It's not the coming of in the murderer by the window, but Mrs. Tangye's apparent preference for that way, that strikes such an odd note. On the other hand, if it could have been her cousin...If Filon was mistaken..."

Late that same afternoon a young man was in the act of following his luggage on to the Harwich boat, when a hand touched his shoulder.

"Mr. Vardon? Don't go on. There's an officer from Scotland Yard waiting to arrest you by the gangway. Come with me. I'm a friend."

The man to whom these words were hurriedly whispered, jumped, and swung round on his heel.

"Let your gear go, and follow me. I've a taxi. Been waiting for you before they should nab you," Wilmot urged. Vardon followed the other to a cab. Once they were in, he loosened his muffler which hid the lower part of his face. "Who on earth are you?"

Wilmot gave his name. To his surprise, it apparently conveyed nothing to Vardon.

"Newspaper man, you say? But how are you mixed up in this?"

"I travelled down in the same compartment with a C.I.D. man, and he talked a bit," Wilmot said. Truthfully enough. Pointer had talked—to him. "I learnt that you had been shadowed when you bought your ticket. Your passport gave you away. You had to have it renewed, didn't you? Hard luck! Well, I determined to get in first and whisk you off."

"But—why?"

"I'm acting as claims' investigator for the company in which Mrs. Tangye was insured. The policies excluded suicides. We believe her death to have been self-inflicted."

"Mrs. Tangye's death? But what on earth has that to do with me?" Vardon asked in seeming stupefaction. "I thought it was the notes that were in question."

Wilmot looked at him for a moment in silence.

"The police believe that death to have been a murder. Or at least they're trying to believe it," he said finally.

"What hour did she die?" Vardon asked feverishly. He certainly was either innocent, or a good actor.

"Between four and six on Tuesday afternoon at her house in Twickenham." There was absolute silence in the cab.

"Stop!" the artist suddenly rose. "Drive to the police station. I must face this thing. It's worse even than I thought. Infinitely worse. And that was bad enough!"

"I shouldn't go to the police, if I were you," Wilmot suggested, "better let me take you to a house I know of where you can have time to think things over."

"I'm innocent!" Vardon declared almost defiantly.

"My dear fellow, there is no criminal here in my belief. No fact has been laid before me—as yet—of a nature to change my opinion that Mrs. Tangye's death was a suicide, if not an accident. Apart altogether from acting for the Insurance Company, I—so far—believe that she shot herself because of domestic trouble."

"So do I!" came from the man beside him. "I'm absolutely certain that she killed herself. That was why she let me have that money. She wanted to make a gift of it. I've understood the whole strange episode since reading of her end."

Wilmot turned to him eagerly.

"Good. You can prove that?"

"Prove nothing. It's only my firm belief. Looking back on what she said, and how she said it."

There was another silence.

"Look here," Wilmot said, "I'm a newspaper man, as I told you, Special Correspondent to the Daily Courier, but not a syllable gets into the press of what you tell me. My word on that."

"Where are you taking me?" was Vardon's reply. He seemed wrestling with his own thoughts.

"To the rooms of a friend of a friend of mine." Again Wilmot spoke the literal truth. The rooms belonged to a friend of Pointer's. "You can stay quietly there till we can think of the best thing to do. How about changing your name?"

"I'd rather not. The police can't have anything worth while against me."

"Then, why did you run away?" Wilmot's glance asked. Vardon flushed.

"It's awfully good of you to take me on trust, this way," he said awkwardly, as they drew up in a quiet street of Sloane Square.

The door was opened by a man who, though Vardon could not know it, was of the greatest service to the Yard. He, and his neatly kept house in which Pointer had installed him.

Going upstairs—the rooms were on the first floor, Bates never had any rooms on the ground floor "empty." It was too easy to get into and out of them—Vardon tripped. He recovered himself instantly.

"My leg gives out at times. Broke my knee-cap when I first got to Patagonia."

Wilmot was very thoughtful for some time after that little mishap.

The rooms were all that could be asked. The terms amazingly moderate.

But Wilmot explained that they belonged to an "explorer" who sub-let them during his long absences. He did not add that the gentleman was now exploring Dartmoor prison. Vardon heaved a quick sigh, as he heard the door close. "Ever hunted?" he asked Wilmot.

"Rather! Why?"

"I used to love it. Used to think November marked the beginning of the real year. But never again! By Jove, no! Now that I know what it feels like to have the hounds after you."

There was a silence. Wilmot was patiently waiting. Vardon leant on the mantelpiece.

"I wonder if you'll think me a fraud? After all your trouble and risk to get me here. But I must talk things over with my solicitor first. D'you mind coming in later on? Say, after dinner? About nine?"

Wilmot said he quite understood, and would come again at about ten.

Vardon held out his hand.

"I'm more grateful than I can say. Just at present I'm a bit stunned. You must make allowances."

They shook hands and Wilmot went back to Pointer.

The Chief Inspector sat thinking for a moment after Wilmot left him. A bell rang. He had a telephone extension which connected with Bates's instrument. Picking up that receiver, the Chief Inspector heard a voice asking for a number. A glance at the Yard's telephone directory gave him the name that fitted it as Dorset Steele, Solicitor, Bedford Row.

"Mr. Dorset Steele wanted on the telephone at once, please. No name," the voice went on. There was a pause. Then Pointer heard a gruff: "Well? Well? What is it? What is it?"

"Can you come and see me? You recognise the voice, don't you?"

"I do. Well? Well?" snapped the solicitor.

"I'm in a quandary. I can't come myself, but I'd like to see you as soon as possible," Vardon gave his address.

"Coming at once," barked Dorset Steele, and hung up. Apparently Vardon was not the apple of the legal man's eye, yet in a very few minutes, Bates showed Dorset Steele up. A tall, thin, rather untidy looking man who carried his head a foot in advance of his rounded shoulders. The "lost golf-ball" look, Barbara Ash called it.

"Now, what's wrong?" he snapped by way of greeting, looking at the young man under his eyebrows like an old poodle of uncertain temper.

"I'm in a nasty hole. So much so that I didn't venture to clamber out by myself, until I had talked things over with you. The police all but arrested me to-day for the murder, or a share in the murder, of Mrs. Tangye."

"Ah!" Dorset Steele tossed his soft hat into a chair as though it were the ring. Then he promptly sat down on it. He stretched out his muddy boots—his boots seemed to find mud as a water diviner does springs—subconsciously. Then he nodded to himself, as though this were what he had long expected, and on the whole, hoped would happen.

"Your story?" he asked curtly, squinting at the other around a collar that suggested a liking for comfort.

"I haven't much of a one. Mrs. Tangye came to my rooms last Tuesday about—well shortly before three as nearly as I can now recollect. She said she knew that I had some sort of a land proposition in the Argentine in which I was trying to interest people over here. And that she had decided that as I was Clive's only relative, and he had left everything to her—Clive Branscombe was her first husband, you know—she wanted to take an interest in it with me. She pulled out one thousand five hundred pounds from an envelope in her bag as casually as though they had been a pair of gloves. She handed me the roll and said that another fifteen hundred should follow at the end of a twelvemonth. Would that do? I told her two thousand in all would be ample. I wanted to go into the question of percentages, and into the affair itself —which isn't in the Argentine really—but she wouldn't wait. Told me to write it all very fully, and send it to her at her bank. Obviously, in the light of what has happened that was just an excuse. She didn't even trouble to pretend an interest in what I was going to do with the money. I suggested three per cent for the first year, five the second, ten the third, and twenty-five after that. I don't mind telling you in confidence that it's an untouched quinine grove, and there's a fortune in it. The difficulty is to keep its location from being guessed at."

"Have you this promise of Mrs. Tangye's in writing?"

"That's the trouble. I insisted on her sitting down and writing a line to say that the fifteen hundred now, and the same amount to come after twelve months, was a loan. She scribbled off a few words to that effect while I wrote out a duplicate. We signed both. I wanted witnesses but though I nearly broke the bell, no one came. I rushed downstairs but there wasn't a soul in the office. There never is; I asked her to wait, but she wouldn't. Finally I had to let her go. She didn't even let me finish telling her that at Puntas Arenas, Maunde would have a proper agreement drawn up, signed, and witnessed, if she would do the same in town. She was out, and down the stairs before I had got the words out."

"Taxi waiting?"

"I don't think so. The Tube is next door."

"Well? Well? What about the line you say she did write?"

"I packed up and went to a hotel in the city, you know. Smith's hotel near the docks. And there my bag was lost or stolen. Her note about the money was in it as well as some other things that I need, too. I kicked up a row, but the bag was gone. They insisted that I had left it in the cab. I know better. I moved my remaining suitcase to a hotel opposite and there, this morning, two men, police officers from Twickenham, came to interview me. When they asked me to show them the paper I was in a tight place. They had just told me of Mrs. Tangye's suicide. I hadn't opened a paper for days. The news stunned me. And then this question about the money! I had cabled Maunde to go ahead. To sign the necessary papers. But I hadn't sent the money. I thought I'd take that out myself. I intended to sail Saturday, you know. It was on me. The positon was ghastly. That paper of Mrs. Tangye's was gone. She had tossed mine on the fire when I handed it to her. I decided that I must at least get the money off to Maunde at once. So I skipped. Whatever happens I'm glad I did. He's got the money by now. I cabled it over. As for me, I thought I could get aboard unnoticed if I went at once. But no such luck! And the end would have been the same if I'd told those two chaps that I couldn't find the bag."

"The effect on the jury wouldn't have been the same," snapped Dorset Steele.

"No. I'm afraid not. But it won't come to that. Of course, I've lost this chukker, I quite understand that. But give them time, and the police are sure to find out that she killed herself."

"Why didn't you come to the funeral? Barbara couldn't understand it."

"I hadn't an idea Mrs. Tangye was anything but in the best of health. Not an idea!"

"And why didn't you write to Barbara to tell her the news?"

"Mrs. Tangye asked me to say nothing about the loan."

"Eh?" Dorset Steele shot the young man a sharp glance.

"Yes. She told me to say nothing about her coming with me into the venture. I said, 'Certainly not, if you don't wish it,' and she nodded as though to imply that she most certainly did not wish it. But naturally that promise doesn't hold good under these circumstances."

"And now, where are you? Whose rooms are these?" Vardon told him of what had happened down at the docks. "You don't know your landlord then?"

"You mean the man downstairs? Not in the least. Why?"

"He was in Scotland Yard. If you're here, you're under observation." Pointer gave a laugh at the other solicitor's acumen, when, next morning, he heard this part of the conversation wound off the microphone in the "clock" on the mantelpiece which was recording every word the two men spoke. "The case is in the hands of Chief Inspector Pointer, I've learnt. They're keeping it dark about the death. They claim to be investigating only the loss of the money. But that's not the sort of a job he takes on. He's as unscrupulous in getting his evidence as any criminal in the land," Dorset Steele said savagely. There was a by no means forgotten incident in which one of his most carefully coached witnesses, and a bottle of whisky, and Pointer had all played a part, that still rankled. "He'll leave no stone unturned to hang you if you're guilty. But he's fair. He's as straight as that poker and about as easy to bend."

Vardon turned red. "So, I'm under observation! And I thanked that chap who stopped me going on the boat...He'll get something other than thanks when I see him again!"

"Wilmot! A moment." Dorset Steele went to the telephone. He was soon in touch with a man he knew on the Courier. He laid down the tube with a grunt.

"That part is true. He is acting as claims' investigator for the moment to the Insurance Company. In place of Cheale..." Steele sat down again and fell into deep thought. "He's on our side, therefore."

"Are you taking my case?" Vardon asked suddenly and bluntly.

Dorset Steele hesitated. He shot the young man a sour glance.

"Yes," he said at last. "But it's going to be stiffer than you think.. Pointer's name in it means that. Suppose this turns into a murder case. Do you know the facts against you? There's the money traced to you which was last paid Mrs. Tangye. There's your slipping away. Where were you Tuesday afternoon around five?"

"I was strolling through the Army and Navy stores pricing things and making out a rough list."

"Speak to any salesmen?"

"Not one."

"Meet any one you knew?"

"By Jove, I did! Lift man who took me up to the bun floor used to be a chap—" his face fell. "Perhaps I'd better leave him out."

"Who is he?"

"He was one of the under-stewards on the boat I went out on. Got into trouble."

"What kind of trouble?"

"Some ass dropped his pocket-book literally at the chap's feet one night without noticing it. Poor Pike has a family who seem to specialise in expensive illnesses, so he picked it up, and I'm sorry to say, kept it. That was bad enough. But the worst of it was the Head steward saw him. End of Pike. He'd have been jailed only the passenger refused to prosecute."

"Were you the passenger?"

Vardon gave an awkward laugh.

"Holed it in one," he acknowledged.

"Help him afterwards?"

"Well—yes, I had to. The chap turned up by chance at a ranch where I was painting the barns. He was half starving. Winter was coming on. Winter on a Patagonian plain! He'd have died with those lungs of his. I got the R.M. to give him another chance on one of their fruiters. He's done quite well since then."

Dorset Steele looked at him.

"And that's the best you can do as an alibi? Nice witness for the jury to hear pulled to pieces. Nice motive to put him in your debt, so that he'd swear to anything to help you. That's what they'd say."

"I know the outlook's pretty poor." Vardon thrust his hands deeper into his trouser pockets, "but I didn't kill my one time cousin-in-law, Mr. Dorset Steele, even supposing she was killed. Anc that's something to go on, isn't it?"

Grudgingly the solicitor admitted that it might be. But apparently he would have vastly preferred guilt and a solid alibi.

There was another silence.

"Have you any explanation," Dorset Steele said suddenly, "any that we can make the jury, if it comes to that, I mean, as to why Mrs. Tangye suddenly paid you that money? I leave your story of an additional fifteen hundred out of it."

Vardon did not answer for a minute. "I can't explain it either," he said lamely. "We'd never met before. She said she wanted to settle up all her outstanding debts, and she thought I had a claim on Branscombe's estate. A moral claim. She talked a lot about wiping the slate clean before another start elsewhere, and so on. Oh, she meant to kill herself. Not a doubt about it! At the time I was too flustered to have my wits about me. She said that money could be a fetter under some circumstances, or at least of no use. And as I had written to her several times for a loan from her first husband's estate—"

"Tut! Tut!" barked Dorset Steele, "you had not! but go on in your own way for the moment."

"That was all there was. I thought I was in a dream, I assure you. I've lived in a dream till that man Wilmot touched me on the arm and, as I thought, saved me. By Jove, when he calls around later he'll hear what I think of him. I'm a quiet chap as a rule, but I won't answer for what I shall say to him."

Dorset Steele pursed his lips. Obviously he was considering the effect of a possible black eye on the jury as a consequence of the interview.

"Better not see him." He got up. "I must be off. I'll have a talk with the police and see if they're keeping anything important up their sleeves." He shot a glance at Vardon. There was no answer.

"You've nothing more to tell me?"

"I've told you all I know."

Dorset Steele looked savagely at him.

"And you expect a jury to swallow it?"

"Why not? It's the truth," there was a flash in Vardon's eyes.

"They'll certainly call it stranger than fiction," the solicitor promised grimly.

He got up off his hat, tossed it on his head, thrust his arms into his top-coat which he had taken into the room with him, and made for the door.

"See no one—if you can avoid it. Say as little as possible. And—keep cheerful."

He finished with an unexpected smile.

While Dorset Steele was talking to Vardon, Pointer was going through the artist's luggage. He found no camera, box or otherwise, but he came on a ring of keys beneath everything else in the suitcase which looked like household keys. The number of the Yale key tallied with that on the Riverview front door. So did the number of the safe key. Clearly these were the missing keys of Mrs. Tangye. The keys which Tangye refused to have connected with the missing notes. Which he said he had seen at Riverview on Tuesday, after the police had left.