The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ was quite honest with her. He told her exactly what the papers knew, but he did not add that the American police claimed to know Carter as Green.

      She said nothing for a minute or two, but sat down in her chair again, propping her chin on her hand, looking out of the window. She took up her story as though she had not asked any question.

      "And then on June nineteenth the Toronto papers were out in head-lines that both Rob and Jack had disappeared, and that a warrant was out for their arrest for embezzlement. And that's all I know."

      "All?" asked Pointer very quietly.

      She flushed.

      "I had a letter from Jack and one from Rob sent me on June fifth from Toronto. Just a line—literally—to say good-bye and that I should hear from them again."

      "Have you the letters?"

      "No, they were each marked 'Burn,' and I did so at once."

      "And—did you hear from either of them again?"

      "Not a word. I saw Rob's death in the paper. I didn't recognize him in that picture as Eames, and then I—I read of Jack's dreadful trouble."

      There was a long silence between the two.

      "And Mr. Beale? Where does he come in?"

      "Beale?" She repeated the name questioningly. "Who is he? Never heard the name that I know of."

      "Eumph! And Miss Heilbronner, what of her?"

      "She married still another man, so someone told me, shortly after the armistice. But Mr. Pointer, you're thinking of Rob Erskine. I'm not. Not for the moment. It's John Carter we must save. Poor Rob is killed, but Jack—" There were tears in her eyes which she winked resolutely away. "Mr. Pointer, you're a fair-minded man, one only has to look at you to see you wouldn't have a hand in faking up a case against an innocent man, and the case against Jack is faked."

      "Then why doesn't he speak out, Miss West?"

      "I can't imagine. I can't imagine!" She spoke as one who had tried hard enough, "but he's no murderer, far less a thief."

      Pointer was sorry for her, and stirred uneasily in his chair.

      "You see, I knew him as a boy, and knew him as a young man. You can't make a mistake as to the very foundations of a character you've known so long and so intimately. Uncle Ian, too, loved him. He loved him better even than Rob, and Uncle Ian couldn't have cared for anyone who wasn't straight." Again there was a silence between the two. Then she leant forward and laid a hand on Pointer's sleeve for a second.

      "Do you think he's in danger, too, Mr. Pointer?" she whispered.

      "Unless he speaks out, and can clear himself with a good alibi, I do, indeed. I'm speaking only of the murder charge—the other doesn't concern us over here. Now, Miss West, you think the charge against Carter is faked. That means he must have a bitter enemy. Robert Erskine was murdered, not by Carter, you say. He, too, had a bitter enemy. Could the same enmity link the two? Can they have a common enemy? Do you know of any event in their lives, common to both, which could have roused any such feeling on the part of anyone?"

      She sank into deep thought and then slowly shook her head.

      "Of course, one's first thought is that they were partners together, disappeared together, and were accused together of embezzlement. Could Mr. Heilbronner be in it for anything?" probed the police-officer.

      "Mr. Heilbronner has been touring Europe for his health since July. I heard by chance on the steamer I crossed on that he was staying in Geneva, but I can't think of him as caring for anything but his moneybags—at least judging by his looks."

      "Humph, not always a safe guide. Now about his daughter. Was Mr. Carter a friend of hers, too?"

      "No he never met her. That I know."

      "And you can think of nothing, absolutely nothing, which will give us any clue as to an enmity for one or both of these two men?"

      "The Amalgamated Silk Society—but that sounds too silly to suggest," she said hesitatingly.

      "I don't know about silly, but as they wanted both men for embezzlement I can't see the point in killing one. And Miss West, you can't separate one man in this case from the other, since Carter won't speak out. It is the charge of killing Erskine that's Carter's danger. Now suppose you tell me more about Carter. We have been told by the authorities in Toronto that even though he was Erskine's assistant he would absent himself from the town and the works for months at a time. Can you guess why?"

      "Rob said he was prospecting."

      "And what did he himself say?"

      "He refused to talk of where he had been."

      "Miss West, why don't you believe that he really had been prospecting?"

      For an appreciable second she hesitated, then with a lift of her head she looked up at him.

      "I'll be quite frank. I know the truth can only help Jack in the end. He never came back looking in the least as a prospector does after a trip. Face and hands burnt and cracked. Hair all rough, and a gait that doesn't lose its stiffness for weeks. There's an unmistakable look about a man who's been away in the wilds that you can't mistake out there. But Jack always came back paler than he went, and with his hands not sunburnt in the least. Nor has he ever been able to walk much since the war. It was his leg that was so mangled."

      Pointer thought of "Green's" New York record.

      "Now once more about the breaking off of the engagement between Robert Erskine and Miss Heilbronner. I wish you'd tell me all you know about it."

      "I never got to the bottom of it because Rob was too cut up to talk of it. Perhaps it was only that old man Heilbronner didn't think the mills were turning out enough money for his daughter. He tried his best to get the place away from Rob, but Rob wouldn't let it go. There was some sort of a clause by which he could purchase it, so much down at once and the rest yearly. He had paid the sum down out of the ranch sale, and I guess the old man was always hoping he'd trip up on his payments, but Rob held on for seven years in spite of all, and then they—he—failed on the last installment. Oh, Mr. Pointer, it was cruel I He first, and then Jack with him, had worked so hard. They had done without everything, pleasures, or enough sleep, or even"—she choked—"enough food those last months, and they just slipped up on it. He needed five thousand pounds, and so, though it cut him to do it, he wrote to his mother for the loan of the money. She sent one thousand pounds and he couldn't scrape the rest of the money together, try as he could. No one in Toronto would give him any help. That was the doing of the Silk Amalgamated. So he lost the mills and they even tried to turn him and Jack out of their positions, but Rob and he refused to leave. And that"—she sprang to her feet again. "I'm sure that is the real reason for the charge of embezzlement—just to break Rob and Jack because they dared to stand out against the Amalgamated. Mr. Heilbronner swore that they had been cheating the company out of its percentages for three years. Said that the Amalgamated had proofs of big orders carried out at the Toronto Mills which weren't entered on the books and on which nothing had been paid."

      Pointer tried here and there to come upon something approaching a clue, but finally he saw Miss West into a taxi, and promised to call upon her next morning. Then he sat up till far into the night trying to clear up СКАЧАТЬ