The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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      "It's a perfectly rotten affair," he burst out at length; "my stepmother thinks I ought to've let Miss Leslie go out on the river by herself. But, you see, I knew,—I mean, I've known her all my life—besides, the weather didn't look half bad when we started;" and then followed a tale of a willful young female dragging the reluctant male into boat and tea-shop, where they partook of a chilly tea—their friends' house proving shut up—and back home through the pouring rain. The afternoon had apparently not gained any retrospective charm in the young man's memory, but Pointer got the clue he was after. Miss Leslie—according to young Thompson—hoped to meet Malcolm Black, to whom she had been engaged before she had taken to the stage. Though the family were away, she had seemed quite confident that the house would be open, and that they would find Malcolm on the little island summer-house which belonged to them.

      When Mr. Deane had dexterously turned the young man inside out, he left him, soothed by the sympathy of one man of the world for another, and quite unaware of the operation to which he had been subjected. As for himself, he had a possibly true explanation of those drenched garments, over which he and Watts had paused more than a moment during their investigation of all the wardrobes of the hotel.

       The next day was the inquest—a purely formal affair, for the Coroner agreed with the police as to the wisdom of leaving out all possible details. He confined it, therefore, to the reading aloud of the letter left by the deceased dentist, R. Eames, and to the doctor's testimony as to the huge amount of morphia taken. The hotel employees were only called on to identify the body, and then proceedings were adjourned for a fortnight, ostensibly to allow of the family of the young man being found and communicated with. The Chief Inspector also managed, on the same ground, that of further identification, to get the burial postponed until Saturday.

      It was a busy day for the police. The work started yesterday of looking up the names of all arrivals from the Colonies or the United States in order to trace a Cox or an Eames, or any names fitting those initials, had to be continued, and the seven 'phone calls which had come through to the Enterprise about five o'clock were each minutely investigated. Three came from within a stone's throw of the hotel; but as the machine in question was in a large general shop, all efforts to identify the occupiers of the booth at about the hour given were in vain. Yet one curious fact came to light.

      The lift-boy of Knotts, the shop in question, was certain that he had seen the Enterprise manager leave the 'phone box at about that hour.

      The manager, questioned casually on the point, maintained that it was the day before—on the second—when he had 'phoned to his hatter, but the boy persisted that it was on Saturday and not on Friday, as he himself had his afternoon off on Friday.

      The manager's hatter, when Pointer rang him up, could remember no call at all from the manager during the latter half of the week.

      Pointer put it to him that there must be some mistake; "and, frankly, we want to weed out the telephone calls as far as possible."

      "Sorry, but I suppose some shop assistant forgot to make a note of my message—or, stay, I do believe I didn't succeed in getting through."

      Inquiry proved that there had been another call occupying the hatter's wire at five, and a little before, but the Chief Inspector wondered whether this were merely a lucky chance or not.

      A telegram came from Watts during the morning: "Found Sikes. Denies visit to London. No alibi. Arriving four o'clock."

      And punctually to the hour Watts presented himself at Pointer's room in the Yard.

      "Sikes—revised version of Isaacs, I fancy, sir—lives in a handsome villa at Brighton—garage and fairly good car. Maidservants. I told him, as agreed, that a wealthy American had disappeared rather suddenly, and the Embassy was making cautious inquiries; that he had last been seen at the Enterprise Hotel, and that there was some doubt as to the time of his arrival. I gave a very flattering description of his looks"—Watts laughed—"and then said that the manager had given us to understand that it was himself—Mr. Sikes—and not Mr. Beale who had been seen at noon on Saturday in the hotel in company with the manager; and as he very much resembled Mr. Beale's description, we had come to him to clear the matter up once for all. I put it most tactfully, I assure you, sir; but he got purple and banged the table. 'Impudent lies! I never was near the place since March last. I don't care what the management says; I never was near the place on Saturday. Haven't been to London, except to a theatre, in months. Tell the Enterprise people that if they make any future mistake of the kind I'll have them up. I'll sue the manager, that's what I'll do!' He had heard about the whole business already from someone else, I'll swear, and was fed up with it."

      "Humph! Well?"

      "I got nothing more out of him, sir. I think his rage choked him too much to let him speak. As to an alibi—he said that his word was a sufficient alibi. He had gone early to town last Saturday, by the eleven o'clock, in order to buy his wife a present, had gone the rounds of the silversmith's windows, had seen nothing he liked; hadn't gone in to any shops, and had wound up the day with a theatre, after luncheon at Frascati's at one o'clock, and returned to Brighton by the five o'clock. Asked if he had seen anyone he knew, he went off the rails again, and shouted that he had made his money in business, and not in gadding about town making acquaintances with idlers. So that's that, sir."

      "You verified his trains, of course?"

      "Oh, yes, sir. They were all O.K. He was well known at the station."

      "So that's that," echoed Pointer as Watts filed his report.

      "Nothing connected with the manager seems to be quite straightforward. However—..." He told Watts of the shape the case had assumed since his absence.

      "Maggie thinks she heard the room door—the corridor door—open. Whew!"

      "It's lucky there was someone in number twelve Saturday afternoon. But for that, there would be no question of time. That medicine-bottle could have been tampered with as soon as Eames had taken his morning dose. Whoever did it poured out the medicine, poured in the morphia solution, which they doubtless flavored with a little peppermint and eucalyptus like the medicine, and left it for Eames to help himself to, at a time when they might have been chatting with the Archbishop by way of an alibi. Then, when Eames was unconscious, someone enters, locks the door, takes out the back panels of the wardrobe, and fixes on the little brass bolt; shoves Eames in, dead or unconscious, screwed the panels into place again, emptied the bottle on to the balcony—it was pouring at the time—put back the last dose of medicine which they had taken out earlier in the day, goes through the dead man's papers and effects, and gets away with whatever the murder was committed for in the bag, down the service-stairs, and out into the street that way."

      "Clever scheme!" Watts breathed, who was following his Superior's account with breathless interest.

      "A simple one, for if it hadn't succeeded—if Eames hadn't drunk the medicine, but had disliked the taste and thrown it away—the poisoner could try again. As for Mr. Beale, we have had word from the American Embassy not to bring him in in any way."

      "Do you think there's any chance of the affair turning out to be political, sir?" asked Watts. "The manager, you know, is Irish—Hughes—and Eames is an Irish name, and so is Beale."

      "Let's hope for all our sakes it won't be that! If there's one thing that's calculated to break a policeman's heart first, and his career afterwards, it's a political case." The mere suggestion covered the Chief Inspector's face with gloom. "Tails all over the place you mustn't step on," he added, after a long pull at his pipe.

      "Seen the picture of Eames in the СКАЧАТЬ