The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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      CHAPTER VII

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      MISS WEST looked at the man sitting at his ease on the other side of the fireplace with a very determined tilt of her chin.

      "Now, Mr. Pointer—you mustn't mind if I call you that, but I'm not talking to the Inspector of Scotland Yard just now—"

      "A Chief Inspector from the Yard—" he corrected modestly, disclaiming the elevated rank she thrust upon him.

      "I don't want to see him. I want a talk with just Mr. Pointer—a man,—a human being—who can be sorry for folk in trouble, and not look on them just as cases."

      "But you see..." Pointer's face was very kind..."any information given to me is sure to be overheard by the Chief Inspector, and he may feel it his duty to make use of it. There's no use pretending he won't, miss."

      She sat a moment studying him again.

      "Very well. Let him overhear what he likes, but all the same I want to talk to you, and not to a police-officer. I want you, and not the Inspector, to talk the case over with me, or we shall never get anywhere. And that's just where the police are in this case."

      "Eh? Where?"

      "Nowhere!" Miss West's eyes snapped; "nowhere at all with John Carter in prison! Now, Mr. Pointer"—her smile was infectious—"you see my position, don't you? A police-officer doesn't have any personal opinions—how can he have? But you have, you know."

      "Well?" Pointer was smiling.

      Miss West jumped up and paced up and down the room. She walked with a fine, free swing.

      "I'll start at the very beginning. John Carter's father"—Pointer noticed that Carter was to be more to the fore than Robert Erskine—"was a prospector. He and Uncle Ian became great friends out on a shooting expedition uncle took once, and after that Mr. Carter used to regularly stop at Four Winds on his way out and back from his trips. I don't remember him well. I was such a little tot at the time. He was a widower, and once, after Jack had been ill, Uncle Ian insisted on his sending him to stay at Four Winds for six months. After that Jack used to spend his holidays from school regularly with us, and when Uncle Henry—I call him that, though, of course, he wasn't any relation to me, any more than Uncle Ian was—well, when Uncle Henry and Rob came out from England we had great times together, we three. Jack was the eldest, he was fifteen; then came Rob, who was twelve, and then I, a year younger than Rob." She paused a moment, evidently back in the happy days of which she was speaking, then with a sigh she went on: "Jack's father died when he was about eighteen. He went to the Calgary College to study engineering, but of course he lived at Four Winds. Mr. Carter had died, leaving awfully little behind him. Uncle Ian would have paid Jack's college expenses, but he would have none of that.

      "He used to work just like any one of the hands on the Ranch in his holidays, and took his pay just like them. Then before he was through college Uncle Ian died. Dear, kind, generous Uncle Ian! We found out that he was fearfully badly hit by some wheat speculations he had got into, which did well at first and then let him in for thousands. He had mortgaged the ranch up to the last fence rail, and though it all went to Rob, there was fearfully little money for him to carry on with. Well, of course, after uncle's death everything was different. I didn't see much of the boys at this time. Rob decided to sell the ranch. Mother moved to a sister of hers in Toronto, where I was studying, and after college I got a post in the High School there. Finally Rob put the money from the ranch into the Silk Mills at Toronto and came on there as their manager. He did well, too, and was quite one of Toronto's smart young men. Then came the war." She paused for a minute or two. "Jack enlisted in the Princess Pats, and went out with the first draft; he was frightfully injured at Vimy trying to get his officer back from between the lines. He was in hospital in France for months and then was invalided out, but he stayed on in France till the armistice, giving engineering courses in the Y.M.C.A., I believe."

      "And Mr. Robert Erskine?"

      "Rob didn't go out. The factory was turned into surgical supplies, and he thought he could do as good work there as in Europe. Besides, he had lost his heart to a girl who was practically German, a Miss Heilbronner. That was how he originally got his chance as manager of the Silk Mills. Old man Heilbronner was the head of the American syndicate which owned the Toronto factory and mills."

      "Was Mr. Erskine engaged to Miss Heilbronner?"

      "For a time, just before and at the beginning of the war, I think he was—sort of on probation, if he could keep on making good. I saw her once or twice out motoring with Rob, and she didn't look the kind to do life on the cheap. Then something happened—I don't know what—which seemed to come between Rob and the Heilbronners. You see," she turned to the other, "mother and aunt and I didn't belong in the least to Rob's real people. I mean—well, of course, I called Uncle Ian 'uncle,' but we were just plain farmer folk same as Jack Carter. The Erskines were quite different, and though Rob never changed an iota himself, his circle and mine didn't mix. Well, Mattie Heilbronner got engaged to another man, and old man Heilbronner was out to get Rob's scalp, so I heard people say; and certainly the factory, which had done so splendidly up till then, didn't seem to do so well after the trouble, whatever it was. But Rob kept his end up till after the armistice, when it was turned back into silk weaving again. Then Jack came back from Europe, and he insisted on coming in to help Rob. Wouldn't take a cent except out of profits, and they thought they were going to pull through in spite of Heilbronner's millions against them. But things went from bad to worse. They were just being squeezed out, so folks that knew said, and—" She came to a dead stop.

      "Mr. Pointer, I've read the dreadful things they say of Jack Carter in the papers here. Are they true? I mean, did you really find all those jewels in his trunk? You yourself? And does he still refuse to explain?"

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