Читать книгу One Way Out - John Russell Fearn - Страница 5

CHAPTER TWO

BLACKMAIL

Because at heart he was a straightforward man, the affair of Janice Elton weighed heavily on Morgan Dale’s mind. He kept thinking about her, about the ruthless dumping of her corpse on the railway track. It was a memory that kept returning to him, all the time he was busy with business negotiations in Scotland.... The next day there was only the briefest announcement about her in the newspaper: her body had been found but as yet her identity was unknown.

“But they will find out who she is,” Dale insisted the next evening to Lee. “They’re bound to! Laundry marks, or some item like that. They’ll discover in time that she was once my personal secretary—and from there the thing will go on.”

“Let it.” Lee shrugged, apparently quite indifferent. “They can’t do a thing to you, sir, not as long as I’m willing to swear that you were with me all the time. Don’t worry so.”

Dale said nothing. He stared at the end of his cigar absently as he held it in his hand. He and Lee were in the lounge of their hotel, clearing up the final details before their return to London on the morrow.

“Y’know,” Dale said finally, “the police will be bound to find out that I booked a compartment on the Scots Express. They will assume it more than unusual that my ex-secretary should be on the same train.”

Lee gave his slow smile. “They can assume all they like, sir, but the law cannot operate on an assumption—only on incontestable facts and witnesses, Otherwise you’re protected by the provision of the ‘reasonable doubt’. Anyway, it’s not certain that she fell from the Scots Express. It’s not even certain that she fell from a train at all.”

“Her scratches and bruises where she hit the gravel chippings will be all the police will need in that direction.... The police are not a gang of halfwits, Lee; they’ll find out from the booking office or somewhere that Janice took the Scots Express. It may be months before they do find out—but they will.”

“If you’re determined to worry yourself to a shadow, sir, I’m afraid there isn’t much I can do.”

“I can’t help but worry. I almost feel as though I really murdered her.”

“But you didn’t, sir—so you say.”

Dale stared. “So I say! Good God, man, you believe me, don’t you?”

“Implicitly, sir. And the police, if they ever catch up, will have to do the same thing—which they will with me to back you up.” Lee reflected over something, then he said quietly, “We’d better fix up these business matters, hadn’t we, sir?”

“Yes, I suppose so....” Dale made a bothered movement. “Wish I could concentrate better.”

Somehow he succeeded in dissociating his mind from the real problem and gave all his attention to the matter on hand—but the moment he relaxed the old ghost returned. Throughout the night, as he tried to sleep, he kept seeing the body of Janice Elton disappearing through the train doorway into the night. He wished he had the detachment of Martin Lee—but then, when he came to think of it, Lee could afford to be detached. He had been out in the corridor when the girl had killed herself, therefore he had nothing particular to worry about.

Dale felt better when he got back to London and placed something like two hundred and fifty miles between himself and the scene of the tragedy. It gave him a sense of security, however false, and as day succeeded day he managed to so involve himself in business affairs that the fate of Janice Elton touched him, but little. He even felt proud that he had not betrayed his secret worry in any way. His wife had not the least suspicion that he was troubled about anything, and his children were all married and away from home so he didn’t have to bother to hide his feelings from them. The only person who knew anything was Martin Lee and he seemed as though he couldn’t care less and never referred to the matter—unless it was to draw Dale’s attention to some item of newspaper news, which he might have missed. Usually, he hadn’t; no man was more avid for a newspaper than Morgan Dale.

The disturbing fact was that the police were apparently making progress in their ‘body on the line’ problem. They had got as far as discovering that the girl, still unidentified, had been thrown from a train after being murdered. Her various abrasions, according to the forensic department, proved this. Also, pathology had shown that strychnine had been administered in a dose of 11.75 grains—and the last thing the police seemed to believe was the possibility of suicide. Nor was there any mention of the poison bottle being found in her clenched fingers....

Disquieting facts, which gave Morgan Dale a good deal to think about. The only thing he could cling to was the obvious one: that he had not committed murder or even touched the girl.

Then, a fortnight after the events on the Scots Express, things took a turn—and in a most unpleasant way as far as Morgan Dale was concerned. He was busy in his private office one morning when Lee entered, thin, smiling, with a curious glitter of satisfaction in his eyes.

“Yes?” Dale asked briefly, without looking up from the work at his desk. “Something you, want, Lee?”

“As a matter of fact there is.”

The way the words were spoken, and without the usual ‘sir’, made Dale look up slowly in surprise. He eyed Lee, standing as subservient as ever, at the other side of the desk.

“As a matter of fact I’ve bought a house,” Lee said. “I thought you might be interested.”

“Interested?” Dale repeated vaguely. “Why yes, of course I am. Where is it exactly?”

“It’s in a high class part of London. The wife thinks it’s beautiful, and so do I. It will save me a great deal of time in getting to the office.”

“Good! Congratulations, Lee. You must have saved pretty hard to enable you to do a thing like that.”

Lee smiled. “As a matter of fact it’s going to cost around five thousand pounds.”

“Really? That’s a lot of money, Lee. What happened? Did you come into a legacy, or something?”

“No; nothing like that. The house isn’t paid for yet, but it will have to be by noon tomorrow, or I won’t get it. And that would be a big disappointment.”

“Yes, of course it would. But where are you going to get that kind of money? Five thousand pounds doesn’t grow on trees. Frankly, what possessed you to embark on such a fantastic scheme when you knew you couldn’t afford it?”

“But I can, Mr. Dale—or, to be more exact, you can.”

Dale threw down his pen on the rack. The vagueness had left his face and the normal bulldog look had returned. He impaled Lee with cold grey eyes,

“I can? What the devil do you mean by that?”

“It has been said, rather truthfully I think, that the labourer is worthy of his hire.... I’m the labourer.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Lee pulled up a chair and sat down indolently, a thing he had never done before in his employer’s office.

“I’m talking about Janice Elton, who was thrown from the Scots Express. I’m your right-hand man, the only man who can swear you never left my side during the time she died, In a word, I’m your only hope between freedom and a hangman’s rope.”

“Stop talking like a melodramatic idiot!”

“Melodrama isn’t intended, Mr. Dale—only facts.” Lee grinned irritatingly. “Those facts have the unfortunate habit of staring one in the face—”

“Now look here, you needn’t start trying to intimidate me, Lee. I’m not the sort you can easily frighten. Even if the police get this far—which I doubt—you can’t nail me down for anything. The ‘reasonable doubt’, remember? You said so yourself.”

“I know, but if I am forced to be unpleasant—which I don’t want to be—the police may discover Janice’s handbag, the note inside it—minus the envelope now, unfortunately—and even the empty bottle of strychnine. You’ll have your hands full explaining those away, particularly the bottle with your prints all over it, and hers when she struggled to stop you.”

“When she what?”

Dale sat like an image for a moment, somehow unable to credit that the words were coming from his meek and mild head clerk,

“You see,” Lee continued, “I didn’t really put the bottle in Janice’s hand. You couldn’t really see what I was doing because I told you to go and get the door open—and I tucked her ‘bottle hand’ out of sight inside her jacket when we carried her.... I felt that the bottle might be a good lever later on, and I guessed right. And I didn’t destroy her handbag either. I still have it intact, Forgive me if I don’t say where.”

“So that’s your game!” Dale said at last, taking a deep breath. “Well, I’ll admit one thing, I would never have thought you deep enough to try anything so dangerous as blackmail. For that’s what it is! You realize that?”

“Of course—but I prefer ‘business arrangement’. It doesn’t sound quite so odious.”

“And you know what happens to blackmailers, don’t you?”

“Certainly I do. I’ve examined the situation thoroughly, and I have decided that in this case it’s a reasonable risk. If you are silly enough to tell the police about me you’ll also have to tell them about Janice—and explain away the evidence, which I’ll produce. No doubt I’ll suffer, but not half as much as you will. On the other hand, for five thousand pounds you can have peace and....” Lee lighted a cigarette. “Peace and my unswerving loyalty.”

Dale got up suddenly. He came round the desk in two strides, gripped Lee by the lapels of his jacket and hauled him out of his chair. His cigarette spilled to the carpet.

“Now listen to me,” Dale breathed, pinning him to the wall. “I’m not being a party to your demands, and what’s more I’m going to give you something for your trouble. I’ll—”

There was a tap on the door. With an effort Lee called, “Come in.”

Perforce Dale had to release his hold, and Lee took good care to place a reasonable distance between himself and his employer. He remained grimly passive as a girl clerk came in, a letter in her hand.

“For you to sign, Mr. Dale. That letter to Phillips.”

“Eh?” Dale looked at her as though he wondered who she was.

“Oh, yes! The letter to Phillips. Thanks.”

The girl gave a vaguely puzzled glance from one to the other and then went out again and closed the door. Lee moved forward, recovered his smouldering cigarette from the carpet, and crushed it in the ashtray. In stony calmness he looked at Dale as he pinched finger and thumb to his eyes.

“The little exercise in primitive emotions being over, Mr. Dale, let me underline what I’ve said. I want five thousand pounds by tomorrow morning at the latest—and I don’t want a cheque. Give me that, and you have a guarantor for your movements when Janice Elton died.”

“From the way you talk,” Dale snapped, “one would think I really did murder her.”

“There’s only your word for it that you didn’t, isn’t there? Of course, if you prefer to do battle with the law when it catches up instead of giving me a cent, that’s up to you—but I’ll make it very hard for you, Mr. Dale, Very hard.”

Dale moved to the desk and sat down heavily. He sat looking at Lee fixedly for a moment before he spoke.

“The thing to do at this moment, Lee, is ask a question—the same question that all victims ask the blackmailer. How do I know you’ll keep to your side of the bargain if I pay you five thousand pounds?”

Lee grinned. “You don’t know I will: you’ll have to trust me, just as you’ve done for the last twenty years.”

“Trust you! What an idiot you must think I am! No, Lee, it won’t work. Whatever the consequences I’m going to report your behaviour to the police. Now get out, before I kick your miserable hide through that doorway!”

“Obviously, you haven’t weighed up every angle,” Lee sighed. “On what grounds are you going to report me to the police? You haven’t a single witness of what I’ve said, and on my side there are no demands in writing. Threats of extortion, don’t they call it? Finally, I’d deny everything, and you’d be left trying to explain away the matter of Janice—her last note to whomsoever it might concern, and the poison bottle. Naturally, if you, report me to the police I’ll give them tremendous assistance without involving myself.”

Dale muttered something under his breath. Aloud he said: “Quite a schemer, Lee, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I rather flatter myself that I am. I play chess a lot, you know—and as the immortal Sherlock once said, that’s a sure sign of a scheming mind.... Your move, Mr. Dale, and your queen is in danger.”

Silence. Dale picked up his ballpoint and studied it absently, and then he put it down again. Lee spread his hands.

“Such a lot of fuss when we can really be quite amicable about it,” he protested. “You’re worth scores of thousands of pounds, Mr. Dale, and five thousand would be a mere button off the shirt to you—yet a fortune to a middle-class clerk like me. Out of it we’d both get peace and quiet.... Good Lord, it isn’t even sensible to haggle over it.”

“You detestable little rat,” Dale whispered.

Lee shrugged. “All right, so I’m a rat. I don’t blame you for letting off steam, but I’m adamant just the same. When you make a mistake like you have you’ve got to pay for it.”

“I’ve made no mistake beyond the one of having you for a head clerk. And I did not murder Janice Elton.”

“Don’t waste time telling me, Mr. Dale. Save it for the police when they get here.”

Through a long interval Dale sat thinking. Finally he slapped his hands palm down on the desk.

“All right, Lee, you’ve caught me on the hop—but for that five thousand pounds I demand a receipt. I want that poison bottle and Janice’s bag with the letter inside it.”

Lee hesitated and then he nodded. “Very well.... That still leaves me with a trump card, which I can’t possibly give you.”

“Trump card? What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about myself. I’m your witness, remember? I could deny that you were ever with me if it suited my purpose.”

“But I’m paying you five thousand pounds to swear that you were! What kind of a scoundrel are you?”

“I’m no scoundrel; I am merely trying to make money out of the man who’s ridden rough shod over me for a very long time. All right, you’ll get your receipt, but the rest I reserve to myself.”

“So you can bleed me again when the mood seizes you?”

“I’m sorry you have such a poor opinion of my honour, Mr. Dale. Don’t worry; you’ve nothing to fear, and I shall expect the money by tomorrow morning at the latest—in cash, as I said before.”

“It’ll be here this afternoon,” Dale snapped. “When you go for lunch don’t forget that you’ve two things to bring back with you—the handbag and the poison bottle. I was a damned fool to let you take charge of them in the first place.”

“Just one of those things,” Lee smiled. “On the other hand, if you had had them in your possession and for some reason the police had suddenly swooped, it would have been—well, awkward, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, get out of here!” Dale exclaimed bitterly. “Get back to your own office and stop there!”

“I’ll have to come in now and again in the ordinary course of business, I’m afraid.”

“Make it as seldom as possible!”

Lee went, the smile still on his thin features....