Читать книгу One Way Out - John Russell Fearn - Страница 4

CHAPTER ONE

DEATH ON A TRAIN

A cloud of smoke, a deluge of sparks, and a roar like a hundred Niagaras—then screaming onwards into the winter dark, rocking over the points, blasting through remote and solitary stations, gradually coming ever nearer towards Scotland. The Scots Express was two and a half minutes behind time, and the passengers within it were well aware of the fact as they swayed gracefully with the lurching of the train.

Morgan Dale, London financier, muttered something uncomplimentary as he dropped his ballpoint and rocked back from the sheet of calculations he was studying. Instantly his chief clerk dived to retrieve it. He held it out in a thin hand.

“Thanks,” Dale growled.

“He seems to be making up for lost time, Mr. Dale,” the chief clerk murmured, but this time he only received a grunt in reply. Morgan Dale had gone back to his calculations, his broad back wedged into the upholstery of the corner seat as he strove to keep himself steady....

The two men had the first class reserved compartment to themselves and the blinds were drawn—save one, which gave a limited view of the corridor outside. Beyond it there was a vision of shifting lights in the darkness as towns and homesteads fled by. Martin Lee, the chief clerk, sat looking at the lights through his own reflection, his thoughts miles away. He was a rather weary-looking man of average height, neatly dressed, with a thin pale face and emaciated hands.

He was a very capable chief clerk, otherwise he would not have kept his job with Morgan Dale for over twenty years. He was also a good mathematician and, though few would have suspected it, a deep schemer. And he hated Morgan Dale absolutely. He loathed the man’s dominance, his monetary power, and his apparent mastery of every difficult situation.... Deep in the mind of Martin Lee was an insatiable longing to change places with Morgan Dale—not physically, of course, but circumstantially, and make him take the orders for a change.

Martin Lee sighed over the vain speculation. That had always been the trouble throughout his life: he had always dreamed vast dreams, and never seen them materialise. Indeed he had made no particular effort to make them do so, mainly because there never seemed to have been a golden opportunity.

A figure passed in the corridor outside, moving from left to right across Lee’s line of vision. In five seconds he registered in his mind that he was looking at a young woman, blonde and hatless, wearing a mustard-coloured suit and carrying a black handbag. Nothing very odd about this: the odd part came a few seconds later when she stopped and glanced back over her shoulder. In that moment Lee recognised her—and she him, apparently. For the briefest instant their eyes met, then they went on up the corridor, moving unsteadily with the swaying of the train.

Lee stirred and looked across at Dale. The big fellow was still busy studying calculations, the light above his head giving a sheen to his bald pate. His bulldog face was in shadow, averted as he bent over the figures.

Lee ventured, “Er—Mr. Dale—”

“Well, what is it?” Dale did not trouble to look up.

“Does it interest you to know that Miss Elton is on this train?”

“Elton?” Dale’s craggy face came into view, masked in thought. “Elton? Who the hell’s—? You don’t mean Janice Elton, that no-good ex-secretary of mine?”

“Either her or her double,” Lee said mildly. “She just went along the corridor.”

Dale debated this for a moment, then he shrugged fleshy shoulders.

“Well, frankly, I couldn’t care less. Nothing to stop her taking the train for Scotland if she wants.” The bushy eyebrows notched suddenly. “Mmm, it’s a bit odd, though. She knew I was taking the train tonight, and she also knows that I’m visiting Highland Amalgamated tomorrow. It was in the appointments book for her to see before I fired her.”

“Yes, sir,” Lee said quietly; then he jumped a little as a train slammed and roared in the opposite direction.

Dale returned to his computations, then at length he put the sheets of paper down on the seat beside him and gave a gesture of exasperation.

“Damned train’s shaking so much I can’t keep my pen still.” He capped it and thrust it in his breast pocket “Maybe I’d better give up— Look, Lee, you’ve got all the details of the Colwin Merger, haven’t you?”

“Everything, sir.” Lee touched the briefcase beside him.

“And the estimates for the Pentland Project?”

“Worked out to the last detail, Mr. Dale.”

“Mmm....” Dale gave a heavy smile that did little to iron out the bulldog characteristics of his face. “You never make a mistake in matters like that, do you, Lee?”

“Never, sir.” Lee smiled faintly and tapped the window frame. “Touch wood.”

“I could say that I don’t know what I’d do without you, Lee—but I won’t. Mainly because nobody is really indispensable. Just the same, you’re my right-hand man. I will admit that much.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Now look, about the Pentland Project, I think we ought to tell Benson tomorrow that we’re—”

Dale stopped. A woman was looking through the one clear space of window that gave on to the corridor—a blonde woman in a mustard coloured suit with a big black handbag under her arm. Dale gazed at her in surprise for a moment, then he surged to his feet and slid the door back.

“Well, Miss Elton?” His voice was coldly courteous. “Is there something you want?”

She did not answer immediately. She was a good-looking girl in the late twenties, but somehow she had none of the vitality normal to a girl of her age. Her grey eyes seemed cloudily tired, and there was a droop to her delicately made-up mouth and features. She stood appraising Dale’s great figure as he stood just within the compartment looking out on her.

“Matter of fact,” she said at length, “I’ve been looking up and down the train for you. It wasn’t until I caught a glimpse of Mr. Lee a moment ago that I realised you must be here.... I’d like a few words with you.”

“Oh?”

“In private, if you don’t mind.”

“You pick the oddest places,”

“Oh, I don’t know. A train compartment is the most private spot in the world.”

“And for that reason you chose the Scots Express because you knew I’d be travelling on it tonight?”

“Since you ask me, yes. I’ve something very urgent to tell you.”

Dale seemed to come to a decision, “Look, Miss Elton, when I dismissed you from my organisation our business association ended. You can’t have anything further to say to me—and I certainly have nothing to say to you. So, if you’ll excuse me....”

“This concerns your private life, Mr. Dale. Something which I must tell you, and which it will be to your advantage to hear.” The girl’s grey eyes strayed to Martin Lee as he sat listening. “I’m quite sure you wouldn’t wish it to go...any further.”

Silence for a moment, except for the distant scream of the engine whistle and the rhythm of wheels over the rail joints.

“All right,” Dale said finally, shrugging. “I’ll spare you a few moments. Lee, find something to do elsewhere. I’ll be finished in five minutes.”

The chief clerk said nothing. Getting to his feet he left the compartment and went out into the corridor. The girl passed inside and took the seat he had been occupying, Dale slammed the door shut and resumed his corner, looking at the girl in the diagonal light of the reading lamp. He was puzzled, very much so, but not for a moment did he show that he was.

“Well, Miss Elton?” he asked presently.

“Mr. Dale, you dismissed me from your organisation because of certain irregularities in my behaviour—”

“I dismissed you because you didn’t know how to conduct yourself!” Dale snapped. “I had no quarrel with your capabilities as a secretary, but I had with your misplaced romanticism, Several times—let’s face it—you made love to me, and even though I did not reciprocate your behaviour became the talk of the staff. I had to stop it, and I did.... I am a respectable married man with three grown-up children. I have a position that dare not be tarnished by the least hint of scandal. I love my wife, and I have no time for your sort— Clear?”

“You never mince words, do you, Mr. Dale?”

“Never!” He stared at her tired face, his mouth set like a steel trap.

“In fact,” she went on, “you’re something of a paragon among men—or at least you like to think of yourself in that light. You can hire and fire as you please, and nobody dare do a thing about it. Except one person, that is.... Me.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I’m going to tell you something, Mr. Dale....” Janice Elton sat back, and relaxed a little, her handbag beside her. “I admit all you’ve said is true—that I did try to find some sentimental streaks in your ox-hide makeup, and I think I’d have succeeded too if you hadn’t have put your wife and business first. That’s as may be, and it’s forgotten now. You fired me a fortnight ago, and I haven’t got another job yet.”

“That’s no concern of mine. I’ll give you a business reference anytime, and say nothing of your—amorous qualifications.”

“I haven’t taken another job, or even tried for one, because I’ve been ill. I only started getting around again the day before yesterday.”

“So?”

“I have been told that I have leukaemia, and at the very most I haven’t much more than a year to live.”

Dale stared at the floor and cleared his throat roughly. Then he glanced at the girl.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Miss Elton, believe me. No matter what our own personal differences I am genuinely sorry, and that’s the truth.”

“I’m sure it is. You know, I got to thinking after an edict like that. Well, who wouldn’t? I reckoned up and found that I have enough to last me financially as long as I need it—twelve months, that is. But....”

“Yes?” Dale prompted, as the girl hesitated.

“I didn’t like the way you treated me, Mr. Dale.”

Dale laughed shortly. “We don’t have to go into all that again, do we? I told you why I rid myself of you, and—”

“Yes, but no woman—not my type, anyway—likes to be brushed off as of no account, and dismissed into the bargain. Since I haven’t got longer than a year I could easily shorten it and leave you something to remember me by...something that I think will knock you from that high perch you’re sitting on.”

Dale stared in surprise. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s simple. I tried to make you have me as I am—alive—and as far as I knew at that time good for a long life. Since that didn’t work out you can still be made to have me...dead.”

Dale was silent, wondering what was coming next. He watched the girl as she opened her handbag deliberately and took from it a small cardboard container. Discarding the container she produced a small bottle of blue glass with a red label affixed. A vague notion of what she intended doing leapt into Dale’s mind.

The train lurched as it swung round a bend. The beating of the wheels over the rail joints became a staccato confusion as points were negotiated. Out in the corridor Martin Lee was tipped towards the window. He gazed out into the smother of steam and smoke with the lights of a station streaking through the pall— Then he looked at his watch. The five minutes stipulated by his employer had expired, but as yet neither Dale nor Janice Elton had come out of the closed compartment.

Lee began to move. In a matter of fifteen minutes the train would be in Glasgow and he and his boss had one or two details yet to clear up. He reached the compartment, which had always been within his vision anyway, and looked at the closed door. Then he looked at the windows. Blinds were drawn over each one, including the one that had formerly been up.

For a moment Lee listened at the door. As far as he could tell above the creaking and roaring of the train there was no sound of voices. Queer. Finally he knocked lightly and called:

“Mr. Dale, are you there? It’s Lee.”

A brief pause, then with a snap of the lock the door slid back and Dale was standing there, a most extraordinary expression on his bulldog face and a purple bottle in his hand.

“What—” Lee began, but he got no further as Dale bundled him into the compartment and closed the door quickly.

“What’s wrong, sir?” Lee demanded, then his gaze moved to Janice Elton. She was in a corner of the compartment, her shoulders wedged into the upholstery and her head lolling forward. It sagged curiously with the motion of the train.

Lee shot a glance at Dale’s troubled face. “What’s the matter with her, sir? Is she asleep, or drugged, or—what?”

“She’s dead! That’s why I drew the blind. I didn’t want anybody to see in.”

“Dead!” Lee gave a start. “You mean she—”

“I mean she committed suicide before I had time to realise what she was up to. See this—” Dale held out the blue bottle. “This is what she took—strychnine. She emptied the bottle before I had a chance to stop her, There were brief convulsions and then....” Silence.

“But—but why? And in your reserved compartment!” Lee looked up in bewilderment. “You pulled the communication cord, I suppose?”

“Not yet,” Dale sat down heavily in the corner. “I did think of it but everything happened so fast. Anyway, what’s the use? She’s dead. No chance to remedy anything. It only happened a moment or two before you knocked. I haven’t had a chance to even think straight.”

Lee reached towards the communication cord, then he hesitated and apparently changed his mind. Moving to the girl he satisfied himself by taking her wrist and feeling at the motionless pulse. There wasn’t any doubt about it....

“It was deliberate,” Dale said, recovering himself and looking at the bottle in his hand.

“Deliberate?” Lee repeated, and the financier looked at him.

“That’s what I said. She told me she’d only a year to live in any case, and to get her own back on me for past injustices—entirely imaginary, I might add—she deliberately killed herself here, intending no doubt to leave me to explain things.”

“Which, of course, you will?” Lee straightened up slowly from beside the girl, his mind aware of certain possibilities.

“Of course I will, you idiot! Pull that cord—we’d better get the guard.”

Lee said slowly, “Do you think that we ought to be that hasty, Mr. Dale? You’re always level-headed in a crisis, and this time there definitely is one. For one thing, you’ve got that bottle in your hand with the strychnine label on it. Where’s the guarantee that Miss Elton took the stuff herself?”

“You don’t think I forced it down her throat, do you? I was compelled to snatch the bottle away from her—just as anybody would have done.”

“Yes, I know, but the police might think differently.” Lee sat down slowly beside the financier, his eyes on the dead girl. She was still rocking like an abandoned rag doll under the motion of the train.

“Look,” Dale said, “this is a deliberate frame-up to get me in a mess—and the quickest way out is to tell the truth.”

“It may be the quickest, but it isn’t the safest,” Lee said, with a curious gentleness. “You say the girl deliberately killed herself to get her own back on you?”

“That’s what she said. It’s ridiculous, but horribly true. She said something about her having leukaemia and only a year to live—and she also said that since I wouldn’t have her alive I could have her dead.”

“Mmm.... Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Be that as it may, and taking into account that she may have been a bit unbalanced mentally by knowing her demise was only a year off, it doesn’t alter the fact that you could have killed her.”

Dale’s face became ugly. “Now listen, Lee, I never killed anybody in all my life—or even hurt ’em knowingly. I’m willing to take my chance on that score.”

“You are? With a business reputation like yours? Even if the police believe you there’s going to be a lot of publicity, and it won’t be exactly—favourable. Apart from that strychnine bottle, which by now has got your fingerprints all over it—”

“Damnit, what else do you expect? I told you, I snatched it from her.”

“I’m sure you did, sir, but your fingerprints are all over it just the same. I was saying—apart from that you can be pretty sure that she’ll have fixed a lot of other things in advance which will tend to incriminate you once they’re unearthed. If she meant to get you—and knowing she was going to commit suicide anyway—she had no need to pull her punches....”

The monotonous clicking of the rail joints was not so swift as it had been. The train was commencing to slow down, Dale still looked as though he wondered what had hit him, whereas Lee had a faint smile on his thin features.

“Yes,” Lee said at length, “she’ll have fixed all sorts of things to make matters difficult for you— Let’s take a look at her handbag for a start,”

“That’s crazy! If the police are to be told we don’t want to touch anything—”

“I’m thinking of your interests, Mr. Dale. You’ve called me your right hand. You need one now if ever you did.”

Lee did not hesitate any further. He lifted the girl’s handbag, snapped the catch, and turned the whole issue upside down on the seat. A variety of feminine fripperies fell out. including a small sum of money and, rather significantly, a single ticket to Glasgow. But there was also a sealed envelope, inscribed to ‘Whomever It May Concern’. Lee frowned, tore the flap, and pulled out a note. He read it, then without a word handed it to his worried employer.

Dale scowled over it, his jaw setting.

To Whom It May Concern—

In the event of anything happening to me, please investigate the movements of my former employer, Mr. Morgan Dale, financier, 42 Justin’s Court, London, W1, which person I believe may be directly responsible for any harm that might befall me.

Janice Elton

“Of all the damned impudence!” Dale snorted, jumping to his feet and throwing the letter on the seat.

“Not so much impudence, sir, as strategy. Evidently she hoped the police would find this note—and you can be sure, as I said earlier, that she’ll have left a thorny trail against you.”

“I don’t care if she has. The police can think what they like but I intend to tell the truth. Take this bottle, for instance. She couldn’t have got poison like this without signing for it. That’s one prop kicked from under her precious story to begin with.”

“Look, sir, this is one case where honesty and the facts against you don’t jell very easily. Why take a risk like that when everything can be so easily taken care of?”

“How? This is my compartment, reserved in my name, and this girl is inside it—dead.”

Lee got up again and moving to the outer windows he peered round the blind. There were slowly moving, dancing lights in the distance. He turned, obviously thinking swiftly.

“We haven’t much time, sir. We’re coming to the station.... Are you prepared to trust me?”

“I’ve done so for twenty years so I may as well go on doing it. What do you suggest?”

“Throwing this unfortunate young lady out of the carriage whilst there is still time. Since she’s dead it won’t hurt her.”

“How the devil do you propose to do that? There is solid window on this side of the carriage and the corridor on the other.”

“We’re in the last compartment, aren’t we? In the corridor there’s the door and a drop-window: we wouldn’t have to pass any other compartments to get to it. It’s a chance, I know, but it’s worth it.”

Dale did not say anything. Lee continued:

“In her fingers, which are not yet too rigid, we can put the poison bottle so she’ll be clutching it. The handbag and the letter we’ll retain. She could hardly jump from a moving train with a handbag clutched to her, but she might hold the poison bottle.”

“Mmm—she might. It’s ghoulish, Lee.”

“Why is it? It makes you safe, and the girl herself will feel nothing.”

“It would make things simpler,” Dale mused.

“Even more so when I swear—should it ever be needed—that you, and I were alone in here throughout the journey.... I’m your right-hand man, remember?”

Dale did not hesitate any longer. Indeed there was not the time. In a matter of minutes the train would be pulling into Glasgow. He moved to Lee’s side and watched impatiently whilst Lee worked the blue bottle into the girl’s stiffening fingers. In the midst of the job he glanced up.

“See if the corridor’s quiet,” he instructed. “If it is, get the door open and leave it on the second catch. We’ve got to act fast.”

Dale did as he was told—for a change. The corridor was empty. He leapt across the brief stretch to the outside door and dropped the window reaching his hand down to the outer catch of the door. Steam and cold wind blew into his eyes.... Then he came back into the compartment to find Lee in the act of hauling the girl’s dead weight from the seat.

“Okay,” Lee wheezed. “Out with her. Grab hold.”

Dale obeyed and grabbed the girl’s ankles. Then with the body slumped between them they shuffled quickly across the small intervening stretch of still deserted corridor to the partly unlatched door.

“Right,” Lee panted. “Leave her to me. I’ve got her.”

With an effort Lee propped the girl up on her feet, taking her sagging weight against his own shoulder. He reached with one hand to open the door, and then shoved. The door opened slowly against the pressure of the wind and the girl reeled outwards into the night and was gone. The door slammed shut again as Lee pulled it.

He looked at Dale and they went back into their compartment, mopping their sweating faces. At last Dale said:

“I still don’t know if we did the right thing.”

“There was no other way, sir—and good luck was with us in that the corridor was empty.”

Lee looked about him and then methodically collected the odds and ends from the seat, the accusing note included, and put them all back in the handbag together with the strychnine bottle’s cardboard container. Still with the same calmness he put the handbag in his briefcase and buckled the straps.

“It would be better if I kept the handbag,” he said, as Dale watched him. “You mustn’t have the slightest hint of that girl having been anywhere near you. At a convenient moment I’ll destroy everything.”

“Fair enough,” Dale muttered, pulling his hat and coat from the rack. “Better start getting ready, Lee—we’re coming into the station from the look of things.”

Lee said nothing. For a reason best known to himself he was smiling....