The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ locker. Pointer picked up at once a letter-case folded in three. Inside were a couple of business-looking letters. Otherwise it seemed empty. The letters had pictures and doubtless the name of some Bulgarian firm on both envelope and sheet. Sister Fini was pouncing on other treasure trove.

      "My scissors! I knew he had them! I knew it! I only hope there was nothing of that poor dead gentleman's that got tossed in here, too." She peered around anxiously. "His friends were so sure that something had been lost or overlooked. We really had quite a scene with them. Doctor Sanftl isn't one to listen to that sort of suggestion calmly." She was peering into the cupboard. "No, there's nothing else except the doctor's own papers. They looked over the room upstairs—the room into which the body was taken, so I think we may be sure that nothing was left. They actually thought their friend might have been robbed while in the hospital! I told them that he had not been alone for a moment. First your friend, then the doctor, and then the orderlies who carried him off."

      "They asked for my friend's name and address, didn't they?" Pointer spoke as though the doctor might have told him as much.

      "Yes, they were so sorry to think that they had actually passed him by on the steps. They were hurrying in, thinking of the terrible accident, and your friend was reading some directions the doctor had written down for him about the new hours when the autocar leaves for the Grödner Tal. They would so have liked to thank him for his kindness. Well, I'm relieved that all is all right now." She beamed cheerily, and showed Pointer out.

      The Scotland Yard man speculated on how much time would elapse before she would have spread the news of his friend's pocket-book. If he had been able to bribe an orderly in London, so could others here.

      Sister Josephine had a carrying voice. And the pocketbook might be the key, might be the reason, the long-sought motive, behind this puzzling case.

      Pointer leant back against his locked door at the hotel, and took out the letters, which were in Cyrillic characters. Feeling carefully, he found an inner, secret pocket, over whose mouth a band for stamps slipped. Inside this was a very thin sheet of paper covered with what looked like a poem in faint, fine writing. It, too, was in Russian characters.

      Pointer's eyes glowed. The paper was the kind used for secret messages in all countries. Very fine and very tough, capable at need of being tied to a pigeon's wing or folded into a cigarette. If he was right, he had the treasure in his steady hands—the cause of two murders.

      He returned it to its inner place, for, being in Russian characters, he dared not copy it, and the ink was too faint and blue for it to photograph well. At Scotland Yard are good interpreters. He must get this home to them at once.

      The registered post was too uncertain; flying machines might arouse attention. He decided to carry it home by rail and boat, home to the best brains in England to decipher, and then, and then only, he would know the motive behind the double crime.

      He would have liked to divine it before he learnt it. Vaguely something of the truth was filtering in even now, but he must wait. How long would he be allowed to keep his find? As long, he thought, as some one at the hospital would take to telephone, or he had misjudged the whole affair.

      He turned, and walked slowly up and down in the Piazza Walther, pretending an interest in the minstrel's statue.

      Supposing, he thought, that what was wanted was merely to put out of the way, to kill the owner, or supposed owner of that paper, he would not have a chance of reaching England alive. Not one. But, as he saw it, it was the paper, not his death in itself or by itself, which they wanted.

      His death might be decreed, if he had read it, like the professor's death, like Rose Charteris's death, but the possession of the paper in each case had been and would be the primary objective.

      Here lay his one chance of reaching home. For the murderer was obviously not working alone. Another hand had killed the father from that which had murdered the daughter. A third person might be put on duty in his case.

      Pointer went to the post-office and wired to O'Connor.

      IF WANTING A CHANGE, JOIN ME IN BOLZANO. BRING TOZER.

      Tozer was O'Connor's name for his automatic. Pointer turned away feeling that he had taken out a very good insurance for the paper.

      His room at the Laurin was between two others. He took another for his friend, and into that upper room he himself slipped late that evening, after arranging a bolster shape in his bed. Even so, he spent the night with his doors and windows securely wedged. Nor did he go downstairs until the house was well astir. Then he glanced into his own room. The threads of finest spider-silk that lie had stretched across door and windows were broken. The dummy was not as he had left it. The clothes on the chair were not precisely as he had laid them. So the hunt was up! His blood ran swifter for the thought. There is something in the human being that enjoys a chase, even in the form of the quarry.

      Pointer loafed the morning in front of the café until his answer came, "O'Connor and I arriving Friday one thirty.—Tozer."

      So by noon to-morrow he would have his friend and the paper its second guardian. O'Connor must have done some rapid packing. Until his arrival, Pointer decided to take an open-air cure. Bolzano was a dream of blue skies, with the beautiful, ever-changing green of the hills around it. Plum purple, the great ridge of the Mendel range, a snowy veil still hung over the Rosengarten, all around was the broad valley of the Isarco, the river that the Talfer joins under one of the bridges. All the way to Merano stretched a sea of fruit trees coming into blossom. The little town was gay as the South and busy as the North. Pointer could have stayed on gladly for the mere beauty of it. He took his lunch, not in the hotel, but in the little garden park, off rolls and cold meat that he himself purchased in the shops. The afternoon was spent outdoors in the one smart café of the place, and was followed by dinner on similar lines to the lunch. He used neither bedroom that night, but arranged for a very late bath, and made himself comfortable in the tub with a pillow and a feather duvet smuggled from his room. The bathroom looked out on to the same side as his own room. There were two men who spent the late evening hours watching the hotel from a house opposite. About midnight he saw some sort of a sign pass, by means of a white handkerchief, to others watching in the hotel itself, doubtless in his own room. Pointer would have liked nothing better than to step in suddenly, but at present he was not Pointer, but the warden of a thing at once a possible treasure and an expected revelation, and the rope which was to hang a murderer. The bathroom handle moved very softly. Besides being locked, there was a wedge under it, and Pointer only prodded the duvet into a more comfortable mattress as he listened intently. The bathroom had had a bell, but it was out of order, so the boots had told him.

      Pointer had made it worth the night-porter's while to mend it. He had tried it just before "taking his tub," and had explained to the man, a conscientious but dull-witted Tiroler, that, being a poor sleeper, he had found that nothing helped him so much on a sleepless night as a cold dip. On a bad night he would sometimes have two, or three dips. By all the signs, this was going to be a bad night. So if he, Andreas, heard him, he was not to be surprised.

      "But how about a cup of coffee?" suggested the man after "studying" things over for several minutes like a true Bozener, "I keep some standing hot all night."

      "Good!" said Pointer. "A cup of coffee and a bath together would be splendid. If I ring from the bathroom, just set the cup down outside."

      Andreas said he would, and departed.

      Pointer thought this an excellent time for that cup as he listened to the faint stirs and breathings outside. If only Andreas's step were not first cousin to a carpet-beater's thud! But at night Andreas evidently put on list shoes, for there was a sudden exclamation СКАЧАТЬ