The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ monsieur, your patient would have shot you! My friend and I saved your life. In the mêlée it was a little difficult, I own, to distinguish friend from foe."

      The younger man was led away. The elder, literally foaming at the mouth, was helped to his feet.

      Pointer and O'Connor strolled into another compartment, and roared with delight as they reconstructed the scene.

      When the time came for lunch, they had only two Englishwomen with them, of the usual badly-dressed, over-smiling, over-toothed kind that seems to live exclusively abroad.

      "First service!" bawled the dining-car attendant. "First service!"

      "Are you going?" asked one of the ladies of the other.

      "I think not, dear; I've something here with me." She patted a little wicker case, and after the other had passed out, spread a napkin and took out some rolls and a thermos flask.

      Pointer and O'Connor were smoking in the corridor.

      The lady inside leant out and asked if one of them would be so kind as to close the window for her, she found it too hard to lift. It was a very stiff window. O'Connor entered to help her, while Pointer stood looking on, not suspicious, but watchful. The woman bent forward again and said something to the Scotland Yard man, picking up her thermos flask and a little glass as she did so.

      He did not catch what she said, and leant down. As he bent, her fingers tightened around the flask which was in the hand nearest him. He had already noticed that she held it under the bottom. Her forearm muscles stiffened, too. Pointer's one hand held the strap of the door, his other jogged her elbow, the elbow nearest him. Jogged it accurately. Not so hard as to deluge her with the contents, but sufficient to let him have an idea of what the thermos held. A straw-coloured liquid spurted up, a couple of drops touching her cheek. She shrieked, and rising, would have flung the contents wildly at him. A sharp tap from O'Connor lamed her arm, and the bottle fell on the floor, the liquid running over her very stout boots. A little must have penetrated the eyelet holes, for she screamed horribly as she tried to tear off boots and stockings.

      Once more their compartment became the scene of the day. People crowded into the corridor. The guard again appeared at the double, together with the ticket collector, and demanded to know what was wrong now.

      The woman in the compartment had her feet bare by now, swinging them to and fro over the liquid which was smoking where it bit its way into the floor. She was moaning like some tortured animal as she dabbed frantically at her feet and cheek, all three of which were enormously swollen, and pitted with horrible-looking, white-lipped holes.

      O'Connor stood by the window and Pointer held the door. She had twice tried to claw her way out.

      Now he had been especially recommended in his true character to the Frenchmen by the guards of the Swiss stretch, who had received their instructions from the Milan railway officials. They knew that he was carrying important papers. There was no difficulty, therefore, as far as they were concerned. The woman was carried into some remote, inaccessible part of the tram, medical aid was fetched, and order once more reigned. It was given out that she had cut herself in some way with her thermos flask lining, and that her screams were not to be taken too seriously. The other woman would have been arrested had they been able to find her, but she was apparently not on the train.

      "Changed into a young man, who would have posed as a doctor in all likelihood, and kindly done his very best for me, and for you, too. There was plenty for both of us in that flask. Then she'd have turned into a dear old lady, and been helped off by the guard himself," was Pointer's forecast of what might have been had things gone according to plan.

      A tanned, pleasant-looking, gray-haired Englishman standing before his compartment a little farther down eyed them with a humorous half-smile.

      "You seem to make a most efficient storm-centre, you two," he said; sauntering up to them. "I was in the train to Milan yesterday."

      "It appears that I have an unfortunate likeness to some one who seems to be rather unpopular." Pointer spoke with heat, in the tone of an outraged Briton who is already composing his letter to the Press. "Member of some secret society which he's betrayed, so I'm told."

      He declined the offer of a cigar, and lit his pipe. O'Connor did the same. Pointer had noticed the man, a typical army officer of the old school, travelling over the Brenner yesterday with a gunnery instructor known to him by sight, from Chatham.

      "I suggest that you take refuge in my compartment till we get to Paris, if you want seats. I spend most of my time in the corridor." The man cleared off some of his belongings hospitably.

      Pointer and O'Connor spent some pleasant hours chatting with him. He was on his way home from India, and had some inside information of the real currents under the surface out there.

      CHAPTER TEN

       Table of Contents

      AT Paris, Pointer and O'Connor were met by the former's brother, Cook's chief interpreter in the French capital. He had a group of Cook's men, who ringed the Scotland Yard officer and his companion around as he carried them off to an inner room at the station.

      Here Pointer received a long cable that seemed to interest him vastly from the Yard. It wound up by stating that Mr. Thornton had gone to Paris, and was being looked after by the French police. Otherwise the "case" had marked time since the departure of its leader.

      From the French police, he learnt that Thornton was still at his hotel, and had been spending blameless days in old curiosity shops and unimpeachable nights tucked up in his bed.

      Pointer thought a moment. He considered that the time had come to have a look at Thornton's cards. The trouble was, that gentleman had such an aversion to laying down his hand. Pointer determined to call it without more ado. A telephone message to the hotel told him that Thornton was still up, and in the hotel lounge. Pointer entered it a few minutes later and shook hands. O'Connor, with his friends, all of them seemingly strangers to the man who had just preceded them, seated themselves some distance off. Pointer had hardly begun an, it is to be feared, inaccurate account of his wanderings when a page-boy brought him a telegram. Crushing the envelope carelessly into his pocket, Pointer read the message in a low voice, after a careful glance around to show that they were alone.

      "Mrs. Lane confessed. Harris."

      Thornton turned a dull lead colour.

      "Feeling ill, sir?" asked, the Chief Inspector.

      "This—this message—" Thornton's voice started across lips none too firm. They stiffened as it went on. "How—I thought Mrs. Lane—what does it mean?" Thornton stared at the cablegram—which Pointer and his brother had just concocted at the railway station—as though far away, in some unpleasant, uncertain place.

      "It doesn't say, I see," Pointer mused aloud, "that she's confessed to the actual murder."

      Thornton spun around on him with something like snarl. One would not have believed him capable of such a sound.

      "Mrs. Lane—my wife—what the devil do you mean?" He looked white-hot now.

      Pointer sat down again

      "I see. Mrs. Lane is really Mrs. Thornton. Humph! Divorced, СКАЧАТЬ