The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      The steamship company repeated what Haviland had just told him along the private wire from his station, but in more detail. Before they had closed last Tuesday about a quarter to seven, a first-class ticket to Puntas Arenas in Patagonia, had been sold to a Mr. Vardon, on a boat due to sail next Saturday. Two days off yet. He had crossed with them before, he said, nearly a year ago, on his coming to England from the same port.

      "What class had he gone then?"

      After some time Pointer got the reply that Vardon had come home second-class. Did they know his profession? He was an artist.

      The Chief Inspector's further questions drew out the fact that Vardon had been in only a week ago, talking of going back steerage. Also that when he had dashed in late on Tuesday evening, he had seemed tremendously excited. The clerk at first thought that he had been drinking.

      Haviland, with his Inspector, rushed up to the dingy apartments in Fulham. Only to learn that Vardon had left there late Tuesday night. He had come home about eleven, packed in a great hurry, and taxied his luggage to an hotel nearer the docks. The manageress was not surprised at the haste. Her lodger's month was just up, and as the rooms would have had to be taken for another four weeks, she had quite agreed with Vardon that there was no need for that expense, seeing that he had made up his mind to return to South America by the next boat.

      She gave the young man an excellent character in every way. He had had two garrets called a suite for nearly a year now. Evidently his means were narrow, but she had no complaint about unpaid or dilatory bills.

      As Haviland represented himself as a business man who had an appointment with Vardon, and might be coming in with him on a venture, he asked, and got, the name of the hotel to which the young man had gone.

      Here again, Haviland was just too late. A Mr. Vardon had arrived last Tuesday, or rather early yesterday morning, it was past midnight—but he had not liked the room assigned him, and had gone to another hotel.

      Which one? The hall porter could not say. As Haviland learnt that the man had taken his own luggage, and done without a cab, he tried the nearest. There was a certain brevity and ascerbity in the porter's tone that made Haviland wonder just what had happened, but he had no time to waste. In the second hotel he was told that a man of that name was stopping there till Saturday, when he was leaving by one of the Royal Mail steamers. Haviland sent up his card, an unofficial card. Could Mr. Vardon spare him a few minutes in private?

      A slender, dark-eyed young man with a pleasant, rather gentle face, looking much under his real age, came down into the empty smoking-room at once.

      "It's about Mrs. Tangye—" began Haviland.

      Vardon stared. "She's not here."

      The two police officers in plain clothes stared in their turn. "Mrs. Tangye's dead. She was buried an hour ago," Haviland said after a pause.

      "What?" Vardon certainly looked horrified, incredulous, amazement. "Mrs. Tangye buried?"

      "Didn't you read of the case in the papers, sir?" Haviland asked. He pointed to one lying on the couch beside him. "Here's the whole story, and a bit more—for about the third time in The Flashlight."

      Vardon snatched at it, and seemed to read it through breathlessly from beginning to end. It was an account of the funeral, and a last dishing up of the manner of her death.

      "What an awful thing!" he dropped it to the floor and faced them with his eyes still distended. "I never even glanced at a sheet yesterday or to-day. Been too busy. And to think I heard the newsboys calling out 'Twickenham Inquest' yesterday, and never even stopped to buy a copy."

      "Too busy?" Haviland repeated questioningly.

      "I'm off to Patagonia day after to-morrow. Decided rather suddenly to return. Takes some work to get your things on board at such short notice."

      Vardon picked up the paper again, and again seemed to read the column through, shaking his head here and there.

      "What a shocking fatality! I must telephone at once—" he began. Then he seemed to really see the two strangers for the first time since one of them had handed him the paper.

      "And may I ask to whom I'm talking? To what I owe this call?"

      "It's about your ticket, sir." Haviland said slowly, "about one of the notes you paid for it. Where did you get them?"

      "Is there something wrong with the notes? Do you mean that they're bad?" Vardon's face whitened. "Then I can't—what do you mean?" he finished hurriedly.

      "Do you mind telling us where you got them? I'm afraid it's rather a serious business."

      "In what way? Mrs. Tangye, the lady whose dreadful death is in that paper, gave me them last Tuesday afternoon—day before yesterday in my rooms at Fulham. The very afternoon on which it seems that she shot herself. She's backing me in a new venture of mine. But for God's sake, don't tell me these notes are no good! Why, I've cabled my partner! If I've let him in for—"

      "They're genuine enough, as far as we know, sir. There's nothing of that kind the matter, I believe. Mrs. Tangye's executors couldn't account for their whereabouts, and we've been asked to trace them. I suppose you have some agreement, something in writing?"

      "Naturally I have. I should rather think so! It's upstairs. I'll fetch it. I take it you are from her solicitors?"

      "That's it, sir," Haviland nodded.

      Left alone, the two police officers relaxed their tension. Vardon had made a good impression. Five minutes went by.

      "Better go on up and lend a hand, Brown," Haviland suggested to the Inspector. "He looks to me like a chap who would need help with his packing."

      A moment later a stony-faced Brown slipped in again, and holding the door shut behind him, gasped: "He's bolted!"

      "Impossible!" Haviland sprinted up beside the other as though he had some infallible recipe for collecting the absent.

      But Vardon had gone. He had walked out of the hotel immediately with his suitcase, nodded rather breathlessly to the hall porter, turned a corner, and vanished. As all rooms were pre-paid no one had spoken to him.

      The two police officers said little. There are some things for which speech is too limited.

      "He fits everything!" Haviland said tensely, as very white about the gills, he reported what had happened to Pointer later in the afternoon. Haviland had cause to look pale. Scotland Yard does not tolerate many blunders. But Pointer knew only one unpardonable offence. That was untrustworthiness.

      "Yes, sir! He fits in right enough."

      Haviland waited miserably for compliments on his brilliant handling of the case. None came.

      "Shall I get out a warrant for his arrest?" he ventured to ask, very much doubting whether he would be entrusted with it. "Though he's sure to make for abroad. An artist must know many a port where he can lie hid. South America, too!"

      There was still another painful point for Haviland to trot out.

      "He owns some sort of a box-camera. So they told me at his rooms in Fulham. It isn't with the suitcase, nor yet with the luggage he's sent to the boat."

      Pointer СКАЧАТЬ