The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ Scotch accent, "but I do not want the murderer of my son to escape."

      The Chief Inspector had apparently no explanation to offer beyond the fact of Carter's belated, but absolutely water-tight, alibi.

      "Well, of course you must know your business best," she murmured from among her cushions, "but it would take more than a Frenchman's word to have made me set that man free!"

      She asked very kindly after Christine, and he did not mention the fact of that young lady's coming marriage to the object of Mrs. Erskine's suspicions.

      Mrs. Erskine evidently feared that it would be quite useless, but she had not the slightest objection to his going over again all the Erskine letters in her possession.

      "But Robert's letters are missing. You remember the packet I showed you in Paris?"

      Pointer did.

      "When we returned here—Mrs. Clark came to fetch me: she thought I was too ill to be left to Marie's care alone—the letters had gone. I am sure I placed them in the top of my trunk, or saw Marie put them there just before we started. I had them under my pillow before that. But when Marie unpacked here there was no sign of them. On the whole, I am not sure that their presence was not more of a grief than their absence. But I confess the thought of those letters, sacred to me by my loss, having been lost by some carelessness—" She paused with a worried frown.

      It was nearly half past eleven before Pointer made his appearance on the following morning.

      Mrs. Erskine had had an old trunk brought down from the attic in which, as she sent him word, she kept everything belonging to family matters of any kind.

      There were several letters from Mr. Henry Erskine which were new to the officer. They were all affectionate in tone. It was quite clear from them that he only contemplated remaining away a twelvemonth on his brother's ranch. In all of them, however, there was no faintest clue, no hint of any mystery. The rest of the box concerned the Abercrombies more than the Erskines, and the Chief Inspector gained a very good idea of the stiff but honorable upbringing of Margaret Erskine from them. He went through them and the old books, old bills, and personal trifles which the trunk contained with amazing speed and thoroughness. Then he shut the lid and stood awhile in thought. As he stood there, he heard a soft thud in the next room. To a practiced ear, there is only one thing which makes that sound. A safe-door was being closed in the wall adjoining. A few minutes later he heard Mrs. Erskine speaking from the room beside him. She told Marie to be on hand to let out the gentleman—she had referred to the Chief Inspector as connected with her firm of lawyers—as soon as he should be finished. She did not mention refreshments, he noted, though the day was hot, and the work dry and dusty. Like Christine, Pointer saw that the good lady did not encourage unnecessary expenditure.

      He heard her deliberate steps cross the marble hall and the front door shut. He heard Marie go into her mistress's room. Like a shadow he stepped into the drawing-room, of which the door stood open. From an oriel window he looked down at the car waiting below. There was a man sitting in one of the front chairs and a handsome, painted, plump woman on the back seat, dressed in the very height of fashion. Pointer eyed her keenly through his glass from a discreet position behind the curtains. Her black eyes were fastened on the front door. These were evidently the Clarks, and even after Mrs. Erskine had taken her seat he kept his glass leveled until the car turned up the drive and purred out of sight.

      He slipped back into the little room where the trunk still stood, and when the maid looked in, after tidying the bedroom next door, she found him apparently hard at work. He glanced up cheerily, to meet a very gloomy stare.

      "It's going to be a long job, eh, monsieur?"

      "Looks like it. By the way, I forgot to say something to madame. At what hour does she return?"

      "Only just in time to dress for dinner. There is a great charity bazaar on at the Castle at which madame has promised to help. She gave us all tickets for the grounds."

      "Were you going, too? I heard that there were to be all sorts of amusements."

      "I was going, but, if you wish it, I can stay...?"

      Hope shone in her face again. Perhaps the jaunt would yet come off.

      "No! no!" protested Pointer in genuine horror. "I may be here for hours."

      A bank note was slipped into her hand. "Go and enjoy yourself, ma fille, and drink my health at lunch."

      Marie was in the seventh heaven, what with the chance to get off for the day after all, the twenty francs, and the compliment to her thirty years. Within a quarter of an hour a voiture, with Marie, her husband, the chef and Mrs. Clark's maid, drove off briskly; for, as Marie said, in what better hands could the villa be left than in that of a gentleman connected with madame's solicitors?

      Pointer bolted the doors, and then walked rapidly through the house from cellar to attic. Major Vaughan and his man were away at Monte Carlo, the maid had told him, and he had it all to himself. He took his coat off, and after his rapid general survey examined the rooms in detail. Finally he came to Mrs. Erskine's bedroom. The walls were of grey silk, with here and there grey velvet medallions. After a little measuring he made for the panel beside the window. As on all the others, oxidized metal traceries ornamented the oval. He pressed an ornament which looked the shiniest to his keen eyes. A very few experiments taught him the trick, and the panel swung open on its hinges. At the same time three gongs clanged in muffled fury. Pointer had spent some of his minutes, as he went over the house, to good effect in stuffing sofa cushions around all electric alarums, or the din would have been terrible. The telephone bell beside the bed rang insistently.

      "'Elio! 'Elio!" he called in answer; "yes, it is I, Guillaume, and not a burglar. It was as well I had that little chat with you this morning, eh?" and he hung up the receiver. Then he turned back to the safe. A few minutes went by before even his skilled eyes found the right knob which should have been turned first to silence the alarums. The safe had been bought off a firm which had spared no expense in its installation evidently. It was the only one on the premises, and he hoped to find some interesting things in it. He looked at the safe sitting like a shrine deep in its little niche with great respect. "So it's an Aglae. Humph!"

      The Aglae safes, turned out very sparingly by Creusot, are the last word in their line. He knew them well. There was one in the Commissioner's office at the Yard. They are pretty to look at. No cumbersome, easily detected combination lock here. A little slit, looking as innocent as a slot-machine, faced him, but any key, whether of another Aglae or not, which was not the right one would set a powerful alarum ringing against the light metal of the outer door which no cushion could deaden, and it would ring until the right key was inserted, if need be for thirty-five days. If a burglar, caring nothing for keys, tried his usual tactics of cutting, he would find an outer case which let itself be opened with ease, and out would stream a volume of gas calculated to render anyone unconscious who stood near it, even though the windows were open. Some Aglae had an alternative plan by which a revolver emptied its six cartridges in the direction where the first cut was made. Altogether, a slight acquaintance with an Aglae was distinctly advisable for any up-to-date cracksman if he wanted a chance to show his talents elsewhere.

      Pointer whistled softly. There was only one man in Europe who could help him. In Barcelona, at the foot of Tibidabo, lives a Catalan, a Senor Foch, who works in a simple little shop with his son for the police of seven countries; and lucky it was for the police that honesty had been the motto of the two men, for there is nothing that can be done to lock or key that they cannot do. Only a Foch could copy the key of this safe, supposing Pointer could lay his hands on it for a moment. The Catalans worked only on their own terms. Measurements, weight, and СКАЧАТЬ