The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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      Pointer questioned Sladen about the withdrawal of the money yesterday.

      He was told that the whole transaction occupied a bare five minutes. A cab had driven up just after two; Sladen was busy with a client. His head clerk had taken the sum in question, three thousand pounds, from the safe, and obtained the usual receipt. He had ventured to expostulate on the danger of carrying large sums in handbags. Mrs. Tangye had assured him that it was to be immediately invested. She declined his offer of sending an escort; that was all Sladen knew.

      Pointer learnt nothing more from his head clerk except his opinion of such unorthodox proceedings, and his belief that in some dim way they were connected with the entry of women into the law courts. When it came to facts, Johnston could not even say whether Mrs. Tangye had walked away from the offices, or taken a taxi, or whether she had a friend with her waiting outside. Pointer gathered that the old head clerk had been thrown into a state bordering on coma by the speed, and irregularity of Mrs. Tangye's actions. Neither the clerk, nor Sladen had ever heard her mention her will, or will-making. Nor had she ever referred to the money invested in her husband's firm.

      Pointer asked for a specimen of Philpotts's writing and the number of every note paid for Clerkhill farm. He knew already that Tangye had not drawn out nor paid in, any large sums to his, or his wife's banking accounts during the past month.

      The stockbroker had only given him the numbers of the missing notes, but since the dead woman had removed them all from the solcitor's care only a few hours before her end, the Chief Inspector felt a keen interest in each.

      Accordingly he next had a brief interview with a young Jew of his acquaintance. Hyam was a rising financier, and his moments were precious. But, for the sake of a time when Pointer had saved him from a very nasty position, he could always spare a few for the Chief Inspector. Pointer only needed one. He wished to trace any possible activities of Tangye on the cotton market and learn what had become of the notes which the stockbroker had taken over on his wife's death. Would Hyam use any private means of finding out both points? The investigation would be greatly hampered, and incidentally a quite possibly blameless man harmed by inquiries, however discreet, undertaken officially. Hyam said "Trust him!" And Pointer hurried off to the largest orchid importer in the world, Jaffinsky, near the China Docks.

      Jaffinsky was asked whether any well-known orchid-hunters were in England, just now. Pointer thought that these intrepid men, few in number, who face deaths tragic and solitary, as part of their daily work, would be sure to know one another, and might keep touch in that loose, yet sufficient way common to men whose task needs very special training and special gifts.

      "There's Smith; he's looking after our plants at the Tunbridge show. His beat's Burma and the Himalayas. Then there's van Dam—we could get hold of him for you, I dare say. Sumatra's the same to him as his back garden. Or what about Filon, the Frenchman? What he can't tell you of Madagascar, or North Africa—but I forgot, he went back last week. And if you're interested in the Congo, Bielefeld's a marvel. He—

      "I'll try Smith," Pointer said. "It's only a toss-up. I want to inquire about a man, a one-time orchid-hunter too, so I was told."

      Smith and the Chief Inspector were soon seated in a quiet little back room littered with moss and bamboo. Smith was a strange-looking fellow. The colour of mahogany, with a face apparently carved out of red stone, wide-apart eyes, gray in colour, very still and rarely blinking, a mouth like a slit, a chin like a grocer's scoop, and a body like a whip-thong.

      Pointer explained in a few words what he wanted. Had Smith ever chanced to come across a man called in England, Oliver Headly? An Oxford undergraduate?

      He was about to give a description, but Smith did not need more than the name.

      "Headly? Oh yes, I knew him. About ten years ago. Afghan border. But he was no good."

      "Why not?"

      "Oh-h, many reasons. A good hunter of any kind of game—your kind, Chief Inspector, or my kind—is born, not made. Well, Headly wasn't born. Also he had too many irons in the fire. That border is rather tempting to a certain kind of man. Gun-running, opium smuggling, doped whisky, are all lucrative by-paths."

      "And the kind of by-paths to appeal to Headly?"

      "Anything with money in it would appeal to Headly. Especially if it was off the true. And if it had a spice of cruelty in it, so much the better. But why this interest in a chap who's dead?"

      "Sure he's dead?"

      "Filon told me a year ago that he saw him shot in Fez. Been gun-running for the Riffs. Shot under another name. Called himself Olivier, and refused to state his nationality. I'll give him that credit."

      Pointer expressed a doubt as to Filon's information.

      "I think you can depend on it. Our eyes are our breadwinners, you know. You learn to see accurately, if you're hunting orchids. Don't want to risk your neck to bring home something that grows on Wandsworth common. Besides, Headly wasn't a man to forget in a hurry. Filon told me he recognised him, waved to him, and that Headly waved back. They were going to blindfold him but he refused, and faced them smoking a cigarette."

      Pointer obtained a few more details which would enable him to tap the French authorities at Fez, and get into touch with Mr. Filon, then he asked casually, "Was Oliver Headly a good shot?"

      "Rotten. Luckily he knew it."

      And with that the Chief Inspector took his leave.

      CHAPTER 6

       Table of Contents

      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.

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