Читать книгу The Blue Daffodil - Fred M. White - Страница 5

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GUNTER pounded on the steel door with horny fists.

"For God's sake open the door, miss!" he cried. "It's Gunter. Can't you recognise my voice?"

To everybody outside the fortress, save Garnstone and Ronnie Brentford, Vera was known as Miss Goff. So pure was her English that such a deception was easy.

Again Gunter smote on the metal. Presently he could hear a movement inside, then a rattle of a key. A moment later the door swung back, and Gunter entered, whereupon the door was closed and locked once more.

Vera stood there, her face drained of colour, her limbs shaking like some slender reed swaying in the wind. She was holding on to consciousness by sheer strength of will.

"What's happened miss?" Gunter asked hoarsely.

Vera pointed in the direction of the library. So far she had not been able to speak. All the same, she followed Gunter who advanced without sign of fear. Inside the big room the lights were blazing brilliantly, showing up every corner. On the Persian rug in front of an Empire table used as a desk Garnstone lay as if asleep.

But it was the sleep of death. His face was turned upwards showing a white expanse of shirt over which lay a patch of blood. A dark stain smeared the rug under him, Gunter bent down and examined the still form.

"Dead," he whispered. "And what's more—murdered. If he killed himself where is the knife? I don't see no signs of a weapon nowhere. Nor——"

The caretaker glanced about him. First, at the great safe in one corner of the room where once there had been a lift shaft. No sign of tampering there. A tug at the handle proved that the safe was still locked, the window facing the road and the other on the right looking into the alley-way were also latched. Then how had the murderer managed to find his way into the flat? Certainly nobody admitted by Garnstone himself since the steel door, once closed from either side, could not be opened again without knowledge of its workings. If the culprit had been admitted by Garnstone during Vera's absence, and killed, then the murderer would be hoist with his own petard, for he could never have got free of the flat again.

"I—I found him there like that when I came in just now," Vera whispered. "It was just after half-past twelve by the clock over the fireplace when I opened the steel door. I came in here for a book as I did not feel sleepy. It was a most dreadful shock, Gunter. What shall we do?"

"The police," Gunter suggested. "And a doctor, though he won't be much use. I'll go——"

"No, no," Vera cried. "Not yet. I am afraid of being left here alone. Suppose the murderer is still hiding on the premises. He must be. How could he get away without knowing the secrets of the door? He could never have got out again. Help me to find him, Gunter.

"If he's here, miss, I'll find him," Gunter cried. "You just stay here whilst I have a hunt round."

But there was no sign of the miscreant anywhere. Even the trap leading to the leads above where the conservatory had its place was locked and bolted from the inside so that any person trying to enter by means of the roof would be equally at fault.

"Nothing living anywhere, miss," Gunter declared.

"More than strange," Vera said. "But Gunter—are you sure that Mr. Garnstone did not leave the flat some time whilst I was away? I mean, did he go out at all?"

"Not to my knowledge, miss," Gunter declared. "Couldn't have done without my seeing him as I was in my room from the minute you left this evening until I went to bed, and that was after the turn of midnight."

"Then why is he in dress clothes?" Vera asked. "When I left he was in a morning suit."

Gunter scratched his head in a puzzled sort of way. At the same time he started and his eyelids drooped, a fact that was not altogether lost on Vera. But then Gunter was as powerless to enter the flat as any stranger.

With an effort Vera pulled herself together.

"We are wasting precious time now," she said. "Go and telephone to the police, and look up the nearest doctor. I am not afraid to wait her alone any longer."

It was a trying ordeal all the same being alone with the dead man so that Vera was thankful when there came a tap on the door, and a voice asking for admission.

"The police," the voice said. "Chief Inspector Medway. Will you kindly admit me, Miss Goff."

Vera hastened to comply. Left there alone a little while longer and she would have collapsed altogether. To her came a man in the middle thirties, dressed in a well-cut grey suit and carrying a velour hat in his hand. If not a gentleman, then a very good imitation of one both in manner and speech. Vera heaved a little sigh of relief. This man would understand.

"So sorry to trouble you like this, Miss Goff," he said with sympathy in his tone. "Directly I heard who it was who had been a victim, I decided to come myself. I happened to be detained late at the Yard, and so—but let us not waste time, which is so precious in a case like this. Please be seated, and tell me all you know."

Under this soothing treatment, Vera soon regained her usual clarity of mind. Medway listened patiently until at length he began to ask questions.

"How long have you been here?" he began. "I mean in your present occupation?"

"Just over two years," Vera explained. "But I am not an Englishwoman, Inspector Medway."

"Indeed, madam, you surprise me. But please proceed—and omit nothing. You have no idea what trivial details lead sometimes to great results."

Vera took the inspector at his word. She spoke of days when she lived abroad, and how she had come to England to an old friend of the family—John Garnstone. How she had become in law an English citizen and gradually become necessary to Garnstone, and, in a way, gained his confidence.

"All most interesting," Medway said. "I can quite understand why your employer came to dig himself in here. No doubt many attempts have been made to rob him—this time, I should say, unsuccessfully. However, we shall see. You might open the door again, for, if I mistake not, the doctor is coming up the stairs."

Into the flat came a little lame man with a quick bustling manner, who proclaimed himself to be Dr. Paul Little, of Sefton Square, saying that he had been called by telephone in connexion with something that savored of murder. In a few words, Medway made him wise to the situation.

"And now that you are here, Doctor, we can't do better than view the body. Indeed, I ought to have done that at first. Miss Goff will remain where she is."

Vera asked for nothing better. She knew that the inspector was saving her as much as possible whilst they pursued their grim task. As to that, Dr. Little, after one glance at the body, proclaimed it to be that of a dead man.

"Murdered beyond the shadow of a doubt," he declared without the slightest hesitation. "Stabbed through the heart by a dagger thrust with such force that the point of it penetrated the skin under the shoulder blade. I expect to find that prick when the clothes are removed."

"No suspicion of suicide?" Medway suggested.

"Absolutely out of the question," Little declared. "No man could have driven a knife into his own breast with the force which was behind that blow."

There was little more that the man of science could say or do.

"About how long dead?" Medway asked.

"Not much more than an hour," was the reply; "roughly round about midnight. Rigor mortis has not yet set in. Was there nobody on the premises at the time?"

"That I have to ascertain," Medway said drily. The doctor was unwittingly trespassing on his preserves. "There is a mystery here that will take some solving."

Presently there came men with cameras, and others with some sort of powder for the taking of fingerprints. Their operations took a long time, and when these minions of the law had departed, Medway asked to see Vera again.

"I have been looking round," he told her. "So far as we can tell at present, we have only discovered the finger-prints of two people—those, probably of Mr. Garnstone and your own. But the motive for the crime puzzles me. Nothing seems to be missing, and the safe is securely locked. I have never seen a safe like this one before. Nobody could lock it or unlock it without knowledge of the secret process behind it. Are you one in that secret?"

Vera shook her head emphatically.

"There are some things that Mr. Garnstone never spoke about, and the safe was one of them. He had it specially made by a noted firm in Oxford Street—Landcraft and Co. They may help."

Medway made a careful note of the address.

"There is very little that escapes you Miss Goff," Medway smiled. "I can't even find a maker's name on the safe. Not that I expect to find a clue there. What is baffling me is the way in which the murderer managed to get in and out of the flat so easily. That door, for instance. He could neither have opened it nor shut it. The same with the safe. The trap leading to the leads is intact, and the windows latched. Moreover, the strong electric light outside the building is still burning. There is the side window, of course, which looks down into the alley-way, but that is a good 30 feet from the ground. I have examined the outside ledge with a strong glass, but the grime there has not been disturbed in the slightest. For the moment I am absolutely baffled. No way in or no way out, and no motive—so far as I can see. Perhaps when we come to see the safe opened we shall find something."

That, however was going to be a matter of some time. For Messrs Landcraft declared that the formula had been destroyed after delivery of the safe and their work finished. Their expert might be able to reconstruct his invention though that might be a matter of months. Garnstone had asked for something that could not be duplicated, and got it. Hence the destruction of the formula.

A baffled inspector of police turned sadly away.