The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ if he wanted to get away he must do so at once?"

      And as though it were a play at a theatre, and those words his cue, a constable entered the room and supplied the answer.

      He held out a pear-shaped, dark blue stone that glittered and sparkled as though rolled in gold dust. At the smaller end was a wreath of silver leaves with clusters of grapes in amethysts and garnets. A grape tendril served as a loop, and cut into the other end were three gold bails and the initials C.M. It was the Medici pendant.

      "Where in the world did you get this from?" Superintendent Harris got out his notebook.

      "From Fiery Jim, sir."

      "Temper?" asked Pointer.

      "Neither. He's a good sort, is poor Jim, but he can't resist a fire. Born that way. Chronic. He'd set fire to himself if there were no other way of turning out the fire brigade, and they don't like it. Neither do the farmers."

      "Naturally?"

      "Very naturally. So we see to it that he stays in workhouses when he's not in prison. Never for anything but incendiarism, I assure you. He's quite a favourite, when he's safe. There's no vice in Fiery Jim."

      "And how does he explain this find?"

      "The shepherd put me on to him, sir. He'd noticed' him playing with it. At first the old chap took it for granted it was a piece of glass, but when he looked closer he recognised it by the description, and brought Jim here."

      "Have him in."

      Fiery Jim was not good at consecutive narrative. But the superintendent was capital on this, his own ground, and unwound him as I neatly as a silk spinner would a cocoon, firmly but gently drawing from him what he wanted.

      Jim's many half-tales, woven together, made this:

      Last Thursday night he was walking along the short cut on an errand from the Master of Medchester workhouse with a boy as guardian, when they saw a tall, dark, well-dressed man come striding out from the copse. This was just as the church clock struck ten, for it was to count the strokes that the two had stopped and turned. Jim saw that the man was a stranger, and asked for a match. The stranger didn't understand. Jim held out his hand, repeating his request. The man seemed to mistake him for a beggar. He snarled out something about an echo, and flung a stone at him. Jim's black eye was an "exhibit" to this part of the story. The stranger tore on, and Jim groped for the stone, to carry it and his tale to the Master. But he liked the way it flashed, and sparkled, and kept it as a plaything, taking it out every now and then, and watching it. Fiery Jim had no idea of values.

      Harris sent him in to have "something from Mrs. Harris," after he had made quite sure that Jim could not identify the man.

      "We don't need identification beyond what he heard," Pointer said at once "The echo that Jim heard spoken about was, of course, the Italian for here!'—Ecco! This only bears out what we know already, but it does explain as well why the count decided to leave so hurriedly."

      "Once he knew or heard that that pendant was found he was up a tree!" Superintendent Harris agreed, locking the stone carefully away in the safe. "The chief told me that on Saturday the count had spoken of a large reward he wanted to offer for this stone, and then on Monday morning he had dropped in to say that on the whole he thought he would postpone the offer till he heard from his father."

      "Just so," Pointer stared at his boot tips. "His flinging that stone at Jim here is all of a piece with his slashing Miss Charteris's portrait, with his dropping a pebble or two on her coffin, with his trampling on the flowers that she had worn in the studio, and which came off as she scrambled out of the window, I suppose, or which she took off when she flung her knitted frock on over the other. Yes, the count both wanted, and feared, to get that stone back. If he could lay his hands on it again without any risk of it leaking out how and when he had flung it away, he wanted it back in safe keeping. But as soon as he remembered that the man at whom he had dashed it in his mad fury at ten on Thursday night might bring it to the police instead of to him, he decided to let sleeping dogs lie. So that was why he insisted at the inquest and afterwards on the fact that it was of no value whatever. Not of much value, perhaps, but of considerable danger—to him!"

      "I see it all now." Harris spoke as though the sight were rather pleasant, compared with some mental visions which had been vouchsafed him lately.

      A telephone inquiry confirmed Pointer. Di Monti's rooms were empty. Master and man had gone, and had their luggage, conveyed piecemeal to cleaners and bootmakers by the astute valet to be re-assembled elsewhere, and packed in new valises.

      Pointer had hardly rung off when his telephone tinkled again.

      "Chief Inspector Pointer wanted. Mr. Gilchrist speaking."

      Speaking, apparently, from the context both as coroner and as the Charteris's family solicitor.

      "I acted on your suggestion, and managed to reach Miss Jones, the professor's secretary, who was on a walking tour in Devon. She went up to his club last night and fetched his correspondence. The hall porter knows her, and that she is empowered by the professor himself to take charge of any letters in an emergency."

      "Good!" said Pointer, for there is no place in the world more inviolable than the letter-rack of a club, and within the august portals of the Athenum, Scotland Yard's highest were lower than the youngest buttons.

      "If you care to step in this morning about eleven," Mr. Gilchrist went on "she'll be here with the letters and you can have a look at them."

      Pointer was prompt to the minute. He found Miss. Jones to be an intelligent, middle-aged woman, evidently devoted to her employer and his interests.

      "Here is a letter which the professor has sent, addressed to himself and sealed, in another covering-envelope, also so addressed." Gilchrist handed it over to be looked at.

      "He often sends me private papers in that way," Miss. Jones explained, as had Sibella before. "I put them in his desk, just as they are, till his return."

      Pointer saw a long envelope, looking much the worse for wear, having evidently been folded across the middle, sealed with black wax, and addressed to Professor H. Charteris.

      "Where's the envelope it came in?" he asked.

      Miss Jones fished it out of the waste-paper basket.

      It was addressed to the professor at his club, and had been sent from Milan on the Friday that Rose had been found murdered.

      The handwriting on the outer envelope was not Professor Charteris's, but Miss Jones explained that his eyesight being weak when he had mislaid his glasses, which occurred every five minutes, he would commission the nearest-at-hand waiter, or hall-porter, to address an envelope for him.

      "You have not heard from him otherwise in any way?"

      She had not. Like the solicitor, she was not in the least anxious on account of the silence, though the latter was beginning to think it time that Charteris should come across the daily advertisement asking him to wire or write, if he could not come to England.

      "I should like to examine this a little more closely." Pointer still held the long envelope with the black seals. "I should like to photograph it at my rooms."

      "Short of opening it, you're welcome to do whatever you think fit," Gilchrist said heartily. "The СКАЧАТЬ