The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ come in. Party of Americans arrived. I took it all up in the service lift, and then carried it down, storey by storey. The hall porter had seen to its being chalked with the numbers of the rooms. The gentleman never had a bag with him at all. That's flat."

      "Did you take any more luggage up afterwards?"

      "No. It was my last trip."

      Pointer went up in the lift. He was shown over the hotel willingly enough. The management wanted the thing settled. Pointer represented himself as coming on behalf of the luggage insurance company from whom Vardon was claiming the value of the bag.

      Nothing was to be seen that even distantly resembled the article in question. The lift-boy who had taken over after the first one went off duty was next summoned. His answer to Pointer's question, as to what he would do if he found any overlooked luggage left on the top floor landing, was that he would bring it down.

      "I'd place it in the lift, like I always do if it's there, and either come down with it if I'd the time, or the night porter 'd haul it down when the lift was next wanted. Either way, nothing couldn't get lost. You can't lose luggage in this hotel, sir, not if you tried!"

      "There's no light by the lift on the top floor."

      "The lamp in the corridor is enough. You don't need light to get in or take out luggage. All you want is to see the number on 'em. And the corridor lamp is good enough for that."

      Pointer nodded. He had done with the boy. He now asked for the lift's mechanician, and a ladder. Together the two mounted on top of the cage. The workman flashed a repairer's lamp around. There, hidden from view by a deep ornamental border, lay a brown kit-bag, marked P. V.

      "That's what I'm after!" Pointer picked it up, and gave a receipt—on a luggage insurance company's paper—to the hall porter.

      What had happened must have been that the first boy left the bag on the top landing by an oversight. The second boy, seeing the number of a room on a lower floor chalked on it, had heaved it into the lift as he thought, but on to the lift as it turned out, which had already been sent down. The dim light, and dark shaft had at once suggested this to Pointer. No man but an absolutely fearless one rises high, either at Scotland Yard, or in the Force. Yet Pointer held his very breath as he tiptoed past the coffee-room door, at which Barbara was casting constant glances.

      His footsteps would not have disturbed a tigress with a wounded cub. But Barbara heard them. She darted out into the hall just as he was arranging a message to be delivered to her later—much later.

      "You've got the bag? Phil's bag? Oh, well done."

      Pointer made the best of what he considered a very bad job, and let her accompany him back to his car. Nothing but actual violence would have torn her from his find. He span out the tale of his discovery to the utmost as they drove along.

      "You're taking it to Mr. Vardon, of course?"

      "Of course!" Pointer echoed loftily as though nothing in the world could ever induce him to trifle with, or detain, another's property. "But I think we'll just call in and tell Mr. Dorset Steele its found. He's on our way."

      "I want to be there when it's opened." Barbara's fine little nostrils were quivering like a filly's with eagerness.

      Pointer was very official.

      "I'm afraid this kind of thing—routine work—must be done as routine," he said stiffly. "I think you can trust Mr. Dorset Steele to state the case accurately to you afterwards."

      Barbara seemed duly crushed as he had hoped.

      "Where would you like me to put you down?" he asked as they came in sight of the solicitor's office.

      "My bank is quite close," she suggested pleasantly. It was next door. Pointer glanced sharply at her, but Barbara was counting some change in her purse with the look of incredulous and pained surprise which that operation generally calls forth on a woman's face. Her whole air was business-like. Absorbed.

      She shook hands with him and tripped into the lobby. To run swiftly through a passage, out the other side, up a back stair and into the office of Dorset Steele. She tried the knob of his private office. It was locked.

      "No one can come in!" snapped Dorset Steele's voice. "It's me, grandfather," she said meekly. He made no reply.

      The head clerk who had witnessed her mad swoop upon the inner room, proffered a paper. Barbara wrapt herself in it haughtily, blinking to keep back the tears.

      "Phil's bag! I know they're opening it without waiting for him!" So, she was not to be there. To see his vindication. She wanted to read that piece of paper more than any of them could. It would be balm to her quivering, doubt-tormented spirit.

      The door was finally unbolted. Barbara was in like a wind-driven bird.

      "Well?" she asked, "well?" For there stood the bag in the centre of the table. "Have you opened it? Without Philip?"

      "A pretty state of things!" fumed Dorset Steele, putting an arm around her. "My private door practically forced open like—"

      "Did you find it?" she asked in quivering suspense.

      "A paper signed Mable Tangye giving Mr. Vardon the money to invest for her, is here all right, Miss Ash," Pointer reassured her.

      "Then, what's wrong?" she asked her grandfather, looking searchingly into his face, "what's wrong?"

      "Nothing!" he snapped, dropping his arm, and turning away.

      Barbara's gaze grew more agonised.

      "I think you'd better explain, sir," Pointer said quietly. He opened the bag again; he lifted out an envelope.

      "There's the paper giving him the use of the money. But would you say that was written by Mrs. Tangye?" he asked Barbara reluctantly.

      Barbara stared at it. Her eyes blurred.

      "I—I don't know her writing well enough to say."

      "It's not like any specimens which Mr. Dorset Steele and I have," Pointer explained. "And it's written with Mr. Vardon's stylograph. And on his paper. The last is natural of course. So is the pen, perhaps, but that writing?" He eyed it very hard.

      "I know you'll take his word—" she began. It was a silly sentence. But she was speaking as much to her own heart as to Pointer. She turned to him, confident of being met half-way. Then she stared. He had altered. She had thought his eyes kind; they were steel. For the first time Barbara sensed that the man beside her was by nature a close-in fighter. The cut of his nostrils, the set of his lips, the very bone formation of his good-looking face, would have told a skilled observer as much at a glance. But for the first time in her knowledge of him, the invincible, fiery, essence of the spirit was flaming through the calm exterior of the man.

      Instinct told her that nothing would move the Chief Inspector to alter the course which he thought the true one, by the breadth of an atom. She was right, nothing would.

      He seemed to her suddenly very awful. Very terrible. She would not be the first who had had cause to think him so.

      She looked dumbly at her grandfather.

      "The Chief Inspector believes it's СКАЧАТЬ