The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ had looked like a man who had learnt that something on which he confidently counted had gone all wrong. That description fitted Thornton's own face and manner exactly, as he stopped and nodded to the detective-officer.

      "To-morrow morning at eleven, sir, would you kindly manage to make time to come to my rooms at New Scotland Yard? I want to get the people chiefly associated with Stillwater House assembled in a sort of meeting."

      "Royal command? Or are startling developments expected?" Thornton asked caustically.

      "At eleven, then, sir." Pointer spoke as though the other had accepted with alacrity. "Unfortunately, I can't get the women's finger-prints. Mrs. Lane's, for instance. I suppose, by the way," Pointer threw in, "that you never met her before she went to Stillwater House?"

      "Never!" Thornton said the word before the other had finished his question. Yet Pointer knew from a short note that Watts had found among the colonel's papers at his club that Mrs. Lane had met Thornton before. It was a vague letter as far as dates or facts were concerned, but that was clear enough in it.

      Next morning saw Colonel Scarlett, Thornton, Bellairs, Bond, and Cockburn all wedged into the inner of Pointer's three official rooms, which was all but filled by a large table.

      Bellairs was a small, handsome man, with a face that Pointer would not have cared to trust.

      "Close fit," Bond commented, insinuating himself lithely into the back row.

      "By jove, it's a breakfast party." Cockburn bent over the centre of the table, where empty soup plates were ranged in a square. "Place-cards and all."

      "Now, gentlemen," Pointer explained, "we have discovered in the sand-pit close to where Miss Charteris's body was found, the marks of a man's doubled-up fists. Such a mark as he might make if he tried to raise himself up on them—this sort of way." Pointer clenched his hands, and, leaning heavily on the table before him, raised himself out of the chair. As he had made the marks himself in the sand that morning, he knew what he wanted. "All rings must be taken off, because there is a curious mark on one—the back of the fingers in our cast where it joins the hand. As there's no room on the table, and there's mercury in the mixture, I think the rings had better go on that shelf behind there."

      Watts was not a well-trained waiter, and there was some little confusion and clatter before each man had two soup plates with a thick white mixture set before him, which he had thrust his fist vigorously. Then a basin of water, soap, and piles of towels were brought in, and after a wash, rings were resumed, chairs pushed away, and the meeting was over.

      "Are we innocent or guilty?" asked Thornton, getting up.

      "Can't tell yet for certain, sir, but I don't see any signs of that little mark I spoke of in any of the plates." Pointer inspected them.

      "D'ye mean to say you've got a list of suspects, and once you've scratched us off, you bag the remainder?" asked Bond curiously.

      Pointer only made some non-committal answer.

      "What about the count?" asked Bellairs.

      "I expect to get his impressions myself in Italy," Pointer explained. "I hope to have an interview with him as soon as may be."

      He looked at "Bond and Co.," who had forwarded him a most useful cipher cable.

      Next morning the Chief Inspector was on his way to Paris and Genoa. Full instructions had been left with the superintendent and Rodman for every eventuality, but Pointer expected nothing startling or showy—until his return.

      Genoa shows only its ugly back to the station, and keeps its beautiful face for the sea, its age-old friend. Pointer wasted no time in looking about him. He made his way to an Italian hotel in the heart of the climbing town. After a wash and brush up, he went at once to the Sotutto.

      There are many inquiry agencies in Italy, many of them reputable concerns. At the head of all for efficiency and reliability stands the one he had chosen.

      Pointer's investigations were backward-reaching. He laid a portrait of Professor Charteris, and one of di Monti, and the portraits of all the people concerned in, the Stillwater case, as far as he knew them, before the manager, a pleasant, clever-faced Genoese.

      "This," Pointer pencilled a mark on the back of the professor's picture, "is the man I chiefly want to learn about. Then I want to know if this man—di Monti—or any of the other men have been seen in your town. I am prepared to pay handsomely for the information. I should think the inquiry might start about three weeks to a fortnight ago. But that is only guesswork."

      The manager made his notes.

      "How long can you give us?"

      "I need the information as soon as possible. This is a big case. Put extra men on the job. I want to be away to-night if possible."

      It was possible. It is amazing what discreet track is kept on all foreigners in Italy.

      When he called again in answer to a telephone message, he learnt this:

      Professor Charteris had come to the Hotel Miramare on a Friday, just a week before Rose was found murdered, in company with a very tall, dark, listless-looking man, whom the hall-porter had never seen before, or since. He would judge him to be about thirty. They had breakfasted together in the professor's private sitting-room, and a good deal of low-voiced conversation had gone on between them. Coming down together afterwards, the lift had stuck fast owing to a short circuit, and they had been delayed between floors for nearly a quarter of an hour. The lift boy had had another passenger beside the professor and the professor's companion. That was a visitor, who, like Charteris, was well known to the hotel. He had greeted the professor as an old friend, and the professor, after a pause, as the lift absolutely refused to budge, had hurriedly, and almost under his breath, introduced his companion as Mr. Sayce.

      He had added that "Mr. Sayce is interested in my scheme for emeralds, so kindly forget that you've seen either of us here. Some very delicate negotiations are going on."

      The lift-boy had particularly remembered the little scene, partly, because he thought that the three men were the last types which he would have connected with business or trade of any sort, and being an American, he had an eye for that well-known species of his fellow man, and partly because of the feeling that neither the professor nor, least of all, the man called Sayce were at all keen on meeting the man who had spoken to Charteris. When the latter got into the lift at the floor below the professor's, the young man had turned his back on him, until the delay had forced the three into a sort of temporary intimacy. When deposited at last on the ground floor, the younger man had had a cab called, and had driven off alone to the station. He had no luggage with him.

      "The man who spoke to Professor Charteris in the lift, you have his name?"

      The detective had, and his home address. He was a Professor Witherspoon, a Cambridge light, and was staying at the Villa Sole, Obermais, Meranoo.

      Pointer put in some hours of strenuous work, at Genoa, tracing, tracking, comparing. Then he got the hall-porter to put him through to Professor Witherspoon.

      He heard a thin, cheerful, kindly voice.

      "Professor Witherspoon speaking. Who are you?"

      "Sayce. You met me in the stuck lift of the Miramare a fortnight ago. I don't know if you remember—"

      "Perfectly. СКАЧАТЬ