The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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      Pointer did not go as far as that, he only considered a forgery as possible.

      Barbara sat down. She felt faint. What was this law that never seemed satisfied? She thought of the gulls that she had fed only this morning on the Embankment. Their stretched necks and greedy eyes intent on more, always more. Cruel and insatiable by some law of their very being. Remorseless.

      "Philip's clever with his pen," she said swiftly, "if he had wanted to copy Mrs. Tangye's writing, he'd have done it better than that."

      Her grandfather's eyes stopped her. Dorset Steele looked as though he were going to bite.

      "We maintain that it was written with Mrs. Tangye's left hand, and as such would naturally show great differences," the solicitor said at once.

      "Leaving that on one side for the moment. As we three are together, and since Mr. Vardon hasn't got here yet—we telephoned to him to come on," Pointer explained to Barbara—"there's another point I'd like to ask you about, Miss Ash."

      "You don't need to answer, mind!" Dorset Steele threw in. "A man came to Twickenham police station this morning. To see the Superintendent. He spends his free afternoons going over the fields close to Richmond golf links with his dog picking lost balls. It seems he heard you and Mr. Vardon together last Saturday afternoon. He was out of sight, he says, behind a thicket at the time. According to him, Mr. Vardon was speaking as though he hadn't any certainty that you would marry him. Yet you told us that you had become engaged some days before then."

      Pointer stopped Barbara with a gesture as cautionary as her grandfather's might have been.

      "I don't want you to answer without thinking very carefully over your reply. According to this man, Mr. Vardon spoke unwillingly of a screw that he could turn—if need be-which would let him make a good deal of money. According to this man, you called over your shoulder as you moved away, out of earshot, that if so, he had better turn it, and turn it hard. Now, if you care to explain this conversation when you've thought over your answers—they are very important, Miss Ash—I would like to hear what you have to say. You're not bound in any way to reply, as Mr. Dorset Steele, here says, but if you should care to clear the points up—that about the date of your engagement, as to whether Mr. Vardon did make any such remark, and you such a rejoinder—"

      "The man misunderstood the whole thing," Barbara said quickly. "Mr. Vardon and I had—well—had a quarrel. I was in a horrid temper. Things had been rubbing it in to me what marrying a poor man meant—"

      Lady Ash would not have cared to hear herself alluded to as "things."

      "Philip has the sweetest, kindest temper in the world. I was a perfect little beast to him. Oh, a perfect toad. Simply too loathsome for words. I goaded him into saying those words. Of course, he didn't mean anything. And, of course, I knew he didn't mean anything!"

      "The man heard incorrectly. No such words in fact, were spoken," interrupted Dorset Steele in such stentorian tones that his clerk in the next room jumped. "Will you hold your tongue, Barbara!"

      Barbara shook her head.

      "If this story is going about, it had better be faced. It's just luck that the only time such a phrase was ever used, was when there was an eavesdroppr. It was Banks, wasn't it?" she asked. "Father of Bobby Banks, whom we had to discharge. He was one of the caddies." Barbara was honorary secretary of the golf club run by the G.F.S.

      "Exactly. The man had a grudge, and magnified some trifle," Dorset Steele nodded energetically.

      "Mr. Vardon refused to see me this morning," Pointer said after a pause.

      "On my instructions," snapped the solicitor.

      "Pity. He might be able to straighten this little tangle out by one word."

      "My experience is that one word only ties tangles tighter." In his irritation Dorset Steele' was getting as alliterative as a Skald.

      "You still think it's safer not to let him talk to me?" Pointer asked.

      "Safer? You mean wiser. Certainly. Look at this whole conversation—" the solicitor evidently considered it a sorry sight. "The case is going to the dogs."

      Pointer, without glancing at Barbara, rose.

      "If you'll excuse me, I'll smoke a pipe outside."

      He thought that the girl needed a respite.

      In silence Barbara stretched a hand up to her grandfather's shoulder and side by side the two stood looking into the fire.

      She saw a dark enough picture. He saw a worse one still.

      "Did I—did I bungle things?" she asked at last, under her breath. "The truth seemed best."

      "Truth!" the solicitor snorted. "This conversation on the links—"

      "If only it hadn't happened," she said sadly.

      "If only it hadn't been overheard, it could have been kept from the jury!" he muttered. "Well, when you see your Philip next, try to din a few elementary facts into his head. Truth is what it's best for the other side to believe," he repeated forcefully.

      "You'll never din that into his head. Nor into mine either, I'm afraid."

      Pointer came in again. He still had the bag with him. Now he placed it on a table behind the door.

      "Nothing is to be said about that, until the door is closed." He took up a place at the window, Steps were heard outside. Coming up the stairs. They were on the first floor. Suddenly there came a little halt in them. A sort of catch. Then they went on again. The door opened. Vardon came in. He looked older, leaner. Barbara felt with a sudden pang that she would give all that she possessed to see again that sunny, all's-well-with-the-world look on his face. She watched him with misty eyes. Had she turned an innocent man into a criminal? Was it possible that she had egged him on, talked him on, nagged him on to—She hated herself for the terrible doubt but it was there. Not of the man as he would have been had she let him alone, but of the man whose nerves she might have worn down with her constant reproachings, exhortations for many months now. Had he—the stranger—done this thing?

      Vardon's eyebrows lifted as he shook hands with the two of them.

      "We've found the bag that went astray," Pointer said cheerfully. "Just look through it, and see if everything's there. It's unlocked, as you said."

      Vardon started. He looked swiftly, not at the bag, but first at Pointer and then at the solicitor. The bag came third. Then he opened it, and bent over the things inside. Pointer had put the paper nearly on top.

      "Ah, here it is! Now, you see!" Vardon drew it out. But the paper had been under his fingers for fully a second. True, he looked as though a load had fallen from him, but he also looked a little bewildered. Pointer thought that he looked as though not quite able to believe his own luck.

      The Chief Inspector took the sheet and asked if he identified it as the one that Mrs. Tangye had written in his rooms. If so, the Scotland Yard man would take it with him, giving Dorset Steele a receipt for it. The solicitor initialled it. He had every confidence in Pointer but he took nothing on trust. Like Pointer himself.

      "Mr. Vardon, what screw did you have that you could turn to order to get money?" Pointer asked as the paper changed СКАЧАТЬ