.

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ about. Something I wanted to say." Again he stopped.

      "We know about that Irish firm having let you down," Pointer put in. The going was very hard for Tangye just here evidently. "We know that on Monday at noon Mr. O'Malley sent you a wire in code to say that he couldn't meet his liabilities and was off for abroad. We know that no blame whatever attaches to your firm for the position in which it found itself."

      "Ah, you know that?" this time Tangye looked relieved, "Well, you've guessed why I stayed on. I had come back home intending to ask my wife to help me out. A damned unpleasant errand. And you can imagine my feelings when the interview started in as it did. But I thought I might talk her into a better temper. She was quick-tempered, but placable—as a rule. I found her adamant. I didn't even mention money. It was impossible. And yet I needed it as I've never needed it before in my life. I went back to town, and on Tuesday morning tried to see if I could raise some. But credit in the city is an odd thing. The whisper of O'Malley's difficulties had got about, and no bank would lend. It would have been suicide to borrow privately. My liabilities, since Dublin had let me in, were too high. Now my insurance papers were in my desk at home. I could raise something on them. My wife's policy was there too. In her own writing-table. I decided to raise money on mine, and if I could manage it, on my wife's as well. I paid the premiums on both.

      "I drove home without any thought of slipping away unnoticed, but as it happened the commissionaire was busy with a messenger boy as I came out of the alley and never saw me. I decided to leave the car at a turning near Riverview, and let myself into the house quietly. I had no desire to meet Mrs. Tangye...I got the documents I wanted. Then I remembered my wife's insurance papers. She kept them in the safe. I ran upstairs, made sure that no one was in our bed-room, and tried the knob. But for once the safe was locked. I went downstairs again. There was no sound in the morning-room. Mrs. Tangye might be out. I slipped into the garden through a side door in my study. Going around to the morning-room, I saw that no light was lit, and that one of the windows was ajar. I felt sure from that that Mrs. Tangye was out. So, switching on the lamp by her desk. I opened it. It was unlocked. The keys were lying on top. The desk was empty except that in the pigeon-hole where she usually kept her policy, was a small pile of account books and papers neatly tied together. Just as I caught sight of one end of the paper I was after, I heard a sound outside the door. I thought it was Mrs. Tangye, and snatching up the packet, I slipped out into the garden again. It was, of course, Miss Saunders who opened the door as I left by the window. She watched me go." Tangye's hand shook as he lit a cigar.

      "There's no doubt about it that my wife must have been sitting dead in that alcove all the time. Florence says she didn't leave the room after four she thinks. It's a horrible thought, but I think it's a true one."

      "I think so, too," Pointer agreed soberly. "What did you do then?"

      "I slipped out by the tradesmen's gate, and into my car which I'd left at the first turning. Drove to the city and raised in five minutes a little money, though nothing like what I needed. But I had made up my mind what I was going to do with it. I have an acquaintance—Merchant of Merchant Bros., as you seem to know. He's in cotton. We had talked things over on Saturday in Norfolk. He had urged me for once to come in on a speculation. The biggest thing of the last fifty years he called it, and rightly. A few fivers margined at the beginning of this cotton boom might mean thousands at the end. It has. I got the loan, telephoned to Manchester and posted him the cheque. Then I got my car out, took my wife's books back with me, and drove home intending to make things up with her. When I got to Riverview the Superintendent was here, and I was told that Mrs. Tangye was dead.

      "The moment you, Superintendent, went upstairs to look over the bedroom, Miss Saunders came into my den." Tangye paused and shot out his lower lip. "She had an envelope in her hands with fifteen hundred pounds in it in bank notes. In a whisper she told me that she had found this envelope lying in Mrs. Tangye's safe. I knew my wife had just sold a farm. I had no idea for how much. There was still time to post the money to Manchester. I thanked her, and decided to pass over her having unlocked the safe without authority. Slipped out of the house and round to the post office. There I telephoned to Merchant's son in the City. He passed my message on to his father, and I posted the notes. On that I returned to the house, to find Miss Saunders sitting here waiting for me. The police had gone. She sat in the chair you're in now, Superintendent." Tangye fixed a meditative eye on the piece of furniture in question.

      "It certainly was an unexpected interview. Miss Saunders accused me of shooting my wife. In a way it makes it infinitely more ghastly that I believe she really and truly believes I did fire that shot. Though how she thinks Mrs. Tangye would let herself be picked off like a half-frozen bee! All that stuff she told you was, of course, invention on her part, but I think she believes I murdered Mrs. Tangye, and then lost my head, and left the notes behind me. Well, I saw pretty quickly what a position I was in. I'm bound to say she helped me to see it. There were the insurance policies on which I had raised money. There was the fifteen hundred which I had just posted; by the six-thirty post, too! There was my presence at Riverview—I had no idea then that I hadn't been seen leaving my office. That was pure luck. There was the visit on Sunday to the orchid-show with a lady. There was the quarrel on Monday! It made an ugly story. Miss Saunders didn't slur anything over. She told me that she had cleaned up all marks of my coming in to the morning-room, and closed the windows which I had left, as I found them open. Miss Saunders made me an offer. To back up any story I should tell. To substitute her name for that of the lady who really was with me on Sunday, if I would marry her—Miss Saunders and give her the promise in writing; at once.

      "Otherwise she intended to denounce me. She told me that she would say that she had seen me actually with the pistol in my hand. I'm bound to say she put the wind up me all right. The more I thought it over, the worse it looked. I couldn't make up my mind what to do. Marry that octopus! Penal servitude didn't seem much better, barring of course the disgrace. Then there flashed into my mind a bottle of vanishing ink I'd seen in Vardon's rooms only a fortnight before. It looked just like the regular stuff, only it wouldn't last a fortnight. He had won it on shipboard as a booby prize, he told me. It's common stuff in every South American stationer's."

      Pointer thought of his wasted efforts.

      "I 'phoned up to find if he was in. He wasn't. But I decided to try for that ink all the same. It meant salvation to me.

      "I told Miss Saunders I would pick her up just over Richmond Bridge, and take her along to my office where my head clerk was still busy, I told her he could be depended on not to talk, and that I would write her a marriage promise there. I took my wife's papers off with me again—I couldn't put them back in her desk after the police had been over it—and drove around to Vardon's, then I made an excuse that I must run up and tell him of the accident. But the ink was gone. He'd given it to a friend only a couple of days before, I've since learnt. There was no help for it. We went on to my office. There I wrote out an agreement which she read through and tightened up. She put it inside her dress and went back alone to Riverview. She told me, by the way, with that engaging frankness which is one of her most amiable characteristics, that the paper would be kept in its sealed envelope by her legal advisor, whoever that exalted personage may be. This was evidently a warning that it would be no use for me to murder her to get it back. I noticed, as possibly you did, that she refused to spend any night at Riverview?"

      "We noticed it," Pointer said with a faint smile. There was a pause.

      "Thank you, sir, for being so frank. If all goes well, you'll be able to snap your fingers at that paper. It was practically blackmail. Now at the orchid-show did you see Mrs. Tangye?"

      "Not I! I hadn't the shadow of an idea that she was there until I ran into Miss Eden by chance. She told me of Mrs. Tangye's having seen me and my companion. And of her having looked terribly upset. I pooh-poohed the idea that she should mind. Naturally it wasn't what I should have chosen. But a flower-show! After all a flower-show I Second to being seen at a picture gallery I should have thought. Miss Eden, however, СКАЧАТЬ