Читать книгу The Day of Temptation - Le Queux William - Страница 3

Within half a minute a crowd had gathered around the cab.

The instant the cabman raised the alarm the constable was joined by the burly door-opener of the Criterion in gaoler-like uniform and the round-faced fireman, who, lounging together outside, were ever on the look-out for some diversion. But when the constable agreed with the cab-driver that the lady was dead, their ready chaff died from their lips.

“What do you know of her?” asked the officer of the cab-driver.

“Nothing, beyond the fact that I drove ’er from Charin’ Cross with a gentleman. She’s a foreigner, but he was English.”

“Where is he?” demanded the constable anxiously, at that moment being joined by two colleagues, to whom the fireman in a few breathless words explained the affair.

“He went into the bar there ’arf an hour ago, but he ain’t come out.”

“Quick. Come with me, and let’s find him,” the officer said.

Leaving the other policemen in charge of the cab, they entered, and walked down, the long, garish bar, scrutinising each of the hundred or so men lounging there. The cabman, however, saw nothing of his fare.

“He must have escaped by the back way,” observed the officer disappointedly. “It’s a strange business, this.”

“Extremely,” said the cab-driver. “The fellow must have murdered her, and then entered the place in order to get away. He’s a pretty cute ’un.”

“It seems a clear case of murder,” exclaimed the other in a sharp, precise, business-like tone. “We’ll take her to the hospital first; then you must come with me to Vine Street at once.”

When they emerged, they found that the crowd had already assumed enormous proportions. The news that a woman had been murdered spread instantly throughout the whole neighbourhood, and the surging crowd of idlers, all curiosity, pressed around the vehicle to obtain a glimpse of the dead woman’s face. Amid the crowd, elbowing his way fiercely and determinedly, was a man whose presence there was a somewhat curious coincidence, having regard to what had previously transpired that evening. He wore a silk hat, his frock-coat was tightly buttoned and he carried in his gloved hand a silver-mounted cane. After considerable difficulty, he obtained a footing in front of the crowd immediately behind the cordon the police had formed around the vehicle, and in a few moments, by craning his neck forward, obtained nil uninterrupted view of the lady’s face.

His teeth were firmly set, but his calm countenance betrayed no sign of astonishment. For an instant he regarded the woman with a cold, impassive look, then quickly he turned away, glancing furtively right and left, and an instant later was lost in the surging, struggling multitude which a body of police were striving in vain to “move on.”

The man who had thus gazed into the dead woman’s face was the man to whom she had been introduced at the station. Major Gordon Maitland.

Almost at the same moment when the Major turned away, the constable sprang into the cab beside the woman, and the driver, at once mounting the box, drove rapidly to Charing Cross Hospital.

To the small, bare, whitewashed room to the left of the entrance hall, where casualties are received, the dark-haired girl was carried, and laid tenderly upon the father-covered divan.

The dresser, who attended to minor accidents, gave a quick glance at the face of the new patient, and at once sent for the house-surgeon. He saw it was a grave case.

Very soon the doctor, a thin, elderly man, entered briskly, asked a couple of questions of the constable outside in the corridor, unloosened her dress, cut the cord of her corsets, laid his hands upon her heart, felt her pulse, slowly moved her eyelids, and then shook his head.

“Dead!” he exclaimed. “She must have died nearly an hour ago.”

Then he forced open her mouth, and turning the hissing gas-jet to obtain a full light, gazed into it.

His grey, shaggy eyebrows contracted, and the dresser standing by knew that his chief had detected something which puzzled him. He felt the glands in her neck carefully, and pushing back the hair that had fallen over her brow, reopened her fast-glazing eyes, and peered into them long and earnestly.

He carefully examined the palm of her right hand, which was ungloved, then tried to remove the glove from the left, but in vain. He was obliged to rip it up with a pair of scissors. Afterwards he examined the hand minutely, giving vent to a grunt of dissatisfaction.

“Is it murder, do you think, sir?” the constable inquired as the doctor emerged again.

“There are no outward signs of violence,” answered the house-surgeon. “You had better take the body to the mortuary, and tell your inspector that I’ll make the post-mortem to-morrow morning.”

“Very well, sir.”

“But you said that the lady was accompanied from Charing Cross Station by a gentleman, who rode in the cab with her,” the doctor continued. “Where is he?”

“He alighted, entered the Criterion, and didn’t come back,” explained the cabman.

“Suspicious of foul play – very suspicious,” the doctor observed. “To-morrow we shall know the truth. She’s evidently a lady, and, by her dress, a foreigner.”

“She arrived by the Paris mail to-night,” the cabman observed.

“Well, it must be left to the police to unravel whatever mystery surrounds her. It is only for us to ascertain the cause of her death – whether natural, or by foul means;” and he went back to where the dead woman was lying still and cold, her dress disarranged, her dark hair fallen dishevelled, her sightless eyes closed in the sleep that knows no awakening until the Great Day.

The cabman stood with his hat in his hand; the constable had hung his helmet on his forearm by its strap.

“Then, outwardly, there are no signs of murder?” the latter asked, disappointed perhaps that the case was not likely to prove so sensational as it had at first appeared.

“Tell your inspector that at present I can give no opinion,” the surgeon replied. “Certain appearances are mysterious. To-night I can say nothing more. At the inquest I shall be able to speak more confidently.”

As he spoke, his cold, grey eyes were still fixed upon the lifeless form, as if held by some strange fascination. Approaching the cupboard, he took from a case a small lancet, and raising the dead woman’s arm, made a slight incision in the wrist. For a few moments he watched it intently, bending and holding her wrist full in the glaring gaslight within two inches of his eyes.

Suddenly he let the limp, inert arm drop, and with a sigh turned again to the two men who stood motionless, watching, and said: “Go. Take the body to the mortuary. I’ll examine her to-morrow;” and he rang for the attendants, who came, lifted the body from the couch, and conveyed it out, to admit a man who lay outside groaning, with his leg crushed.

Half an hour later the cab-driver and the constable stood in the small upper room at Vine Street Police Station, the office of the Inspector of the Criminal Investigation Department attached to that station. Inspector Elmes, a dark-bearded, stalwart man of forty-five, sat at a table, while behind him, arranged over the mantelshelf, were many photographs of criminals, missing persons, and people who had been found dead in various parts of the metropolis, and whose friends had not been traced. Pinned against the grey-painted walls were several printed notices offering rewards, some with portraits of absconding persons, others with crude woodcuts of stolen jewels. It was a bare, carpetless loom, but eminently business-like.

“Well,” the inspector was saying to the constable as he leant back in his chair, “there’s some mystery about the affair, you think – eh? Are there any signs of murder?”

“No, sir,” the man answered. “At present the doctor has discovered nothing.”

“Then, until he has, our Department can’t deal with it,” replied the detective. “Why has your Inspector sent you up here?”

“Because it’s so mysterious, I suppose, sir.”

“She may have had a fit – most probable, I should think. Until the doctor has certified, I don’t see any necessity to stir. It’s more than possible that when the man who left her at the Criterion reads of her death in the papers, he’ll come forward, identify her, and clear himself.” Then, turning to the cabman, he asked, “What sort of a man was he – an Englishman?”

“Well, I really don’t know, sir. He spoke to the dead girl in her own language, yet I thought, when he spoke to his friend at the station, that his English was that of a foreigner. Besides, he looked like a Frenchman, for he wore a large bow for a tie, which no Englishman wears.”

“You think him a foreigner because of his tie – eh?” the detective observed, smiling. “Now, if you had noticed his boots with a critical eye, you might perhaps have accurately determined his nationality. Look at a man’s boots next time.”

Then, taking up his pen, he drew a piece of pale yellow official paper before him, noted the number of the cabman’s badge, inquired his name and address, and asked several questions, afterwards dismissing both men with the observation that until a verdict had been given in the Coroner’s Court, he saw no reason to institute further inquiries.

Two days later the inquest was held in a small room at St. Martin’s Town Hall, the handsome building overlooking Trafalgar Square, and, as may be imagined, was largely attended by representatives of the Press. All the sensationalism of London evening journalism had, during the two days intervening, been let loose upon the mysterious affair, and the remarkable “latest details” had been “worked up” into an amazing, but utterly fictitious story. One paper, in its excess of zeal to outdistance all its rivals in sensationalism, had hinted that the dead woman was actually the daughter of an Imperial House, and this had aroused public curiosity to fever-heat.

When the usual formalities of constituting the Court had been completed, the jury had viewed the body, and the cabman had related his strange story, the Coroner, himself a medical man, dark-bearded and middle-aged, commenced a close cross-examination.

“Was it French or Italian the lady spoke?” he asked.

“I don’t know the difference, sir,” the cabman admitted. “The man with her spoke just as quickly as she did.”

“Was there anything curious in the demeanour of either of them?”

“I noticed nothing strange. The gentleman told me to drive along Pall Mall and the Haymarket, or of course I’d ’ave taken the proper route, up Charin’ Cross Road and Leicester Square.”

“You would recognise this gentleman again, I suppose?” the Coroner asked.

“I’d know him among a thousand,” the man promptly replied.

Inspector Elmes, who was present on behalf of the Criminal Investigation Department, asked several questions through the Coroner, when the latter afterwards resumed his cross-examination.

“You have told us,” he said, “that just before entering the cab the gentleman was accosted by a friend. Did you overhear any of their conversation?”

“I heard the missing man address the other as ‘Major,’” the cabman replied. “He introduced the Major to the lady, but I was unable to catch either of their names. The two men seemed very glad to meet, but, on the other hand, my gentleman seemed in a great hurry to get away.”

“You are certain that this man you know as the Major did not arrive by the same train, eh?” asked the Coroner, glancing sharply up from the paper whereon he was writing the depositions of this important witness.

“I am certain; for I noticed him lounging up and down the platform fully ’arf an hour before the train came in.”

“Then you think he must have been awaiting his friend?”

“No doubt he was, sir, for as soon as I drove the lady and gentleman away, he, too, started to walk out of the station.”

Then the Coroner, having written a few more words upon the foolscap before him, turned to the jury, exclaiming – “This last statement of the witness, gentlemen, seems, to say the least, curious.”

In an instant all present were on tip-toe with excitement, wondering what startling facts were likely to be revealed.