The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ almost off the boat. Then they shook hands with three men, one of whom was Pointer's chief, and with whom they travelled up in a special guarded car.

      Safely in his own rooms at the Yard, Pointer handed over a pocket book sewn into oiled silk, and went off for a wash and brush up, feeling like a boy home from school, now that his part in safeguarding that paper was done. The paper which he believed to have cost the life of Professor Charteris, of his daughter, and of the man with the bag, as well as severe bodily injuries, so he trusted, to the two men with whom O'Connor and he had struggled in the compartment before they could get them out on to the line.

      The "poem" on the thin paper was re-written within the hour by the Home Office expert. It explained the care taken to regain it. It was a paper that shook the world when it was broadcasted later. But the cipher would have been insoluble without the code-word. The Home Office had that code-word. It had cost a British life for every letter in it.

      It was decided that news should be circulated at once through discreetly indiscreet channels that the Yard was in possession of a couple of Bulgarian letters and a poem which they believed contained secret intelligence bearing on Red activities in that country, but which they were unable to solve. Copies would be sent post-haste to a few thoroughly untrustworthy Russian interpreters marked on the books as in the Bolsheviks' pay. They would be asked to help. A reward would be offered.

      It was about half-past two on the next day, Tuesday, when a constable opened Pointer's door at the Yard. "A lady to see you by appointment, sir."

      "Show the lady in. And bring in the gentleman who's been waiting in Watts' room at the same time."

      Sibella entered with a sort of rush. She looked shocking. So ill, so worn, so white. Pointer thought of some plant whose roots are perishing. It seemed to him as though all the healthy, multifold ties between a woman and the world around her had been cut through in this case, and that Sibella was dying by inches of some fungus, some mildew, of the spirit.

      With all her impetuous entrance, she sank wearily into a chair. But her eyes stared at him almost as her father's might have done.

      "You telephoned me that there were important developments."

      "They're coming. But first I want you to answer a few questions, and to hear some facts. Ah, here's Count di Monti."

      Sibella sprang up with a gasp. Di Monti, too, looked unprepared for the meeting.

      "Please sit down, both of you," the Chief Inspector went on, "it may take some time, this preliminary clearing of the ground. Miss Scarlett, first of all, the information you gave Count di Monti about the meetings in the studio had nothing whatever to do with your cousin's death."

      "Oh!" It was a cry of mingled anguish and relief, of horror and joy. "Oh, is that true?" Her eyes went from him to the count, and back again.

      "If you were told to the contrary," Pointer went on very sternly—

      "I never told you that was the reason. I don't know the reason. How can I? I had nothing to do with that death." Di Monti's voice was hard and strident as he interrupted.

      Sibella turned on him. She evidently dared not trust herself to speak. She only looked.

      "If this man told you anything else, Miss Scarlett," Pointer went on, "it was because it suited his purpose that you should think that you, too, in a sense, were a contributory cause—"

      "In a sense!" Sibella covered her face. "Oh, it's not possible! Not possible! No one would make their worst enemy suffer what I've suffered since Rose's death. I've been down, down, down," she broke off, shuddering. "I thought that I had killed her in everything but actually striking the blow. That my hand had directed his—I mean—" she stopped herself. "Since they brought her body home I've thought that it was my doing."

      She was shuddering from head to foot.

      "I want to know the whole story, Miss Scarlett. As for the count—well, that will come later."

      He looked hard at di Monti, and the count's jaws tightened.

      "This man has no authority to ask you a single question, Sibella." The Italian strode over to her and caught her hand in his. "If I made you suffer, I had to."

      "Why?" Her eyes fastened themselves with an incredulous stare on him, as though she saw a stranger before her. "Why did you have to make me suffer? And so terribly? Why you—me?"

      She did not give him time to answer. And he looked as though he would have needed time.

      "What made you torture me? Torture me, soul and body? I—oh—" She flung away, as though it were a tarantula, the hand he laid on hers. "You played me! You used me as a pawn! You thought that I might speak, might betray you, if my tongue were not tied. It nearly worked the other way. I all but went to the police instead of helping you to escape. All but!" She turned to Pointer with a gesture that would have been the pride of a film actress.

      "Ask whatever you want to know. I shall tell you the truth."

      "Anima mia!" In a stride the Italian had her in his arms. He might as well have held a statue.

      "I had to tell you that lie," di Monti went on, "all our future hung on my not being arrested just then, as this buffoon would have done. I knew when they got hold of the pendant which I had picked up in the studio, what was coming. My faithful Arrigo saw a policeman talking to the man to whom I had flung it, flung it as I would a clot of mud. It meant no more to me. The pendant worn by that—" he used an ugly Italian term, "I never wanted to soil my fingers with again. Don't you see, darling, that all hung on my getting away? I would never have stooped to act the mourner at her funeral but for that necessity. I—and mourn—for her! I knew you would not help me as you did unless you thought my life was in danger, and I must have your help—"

      "I quite see the reason," Sibella said, in a hard, dry voice.

      "An arrest just then, or the talk of it, would have spelled ruin. But now," he let her go as she stood unresponsive, no whit softened, "but now I can snap my fingers at the policeman here," he turned and did so, with a crack like a whip, "the post is definitely given, passed by our Inner Council."

      "But you told me that you had killed Rose," Sibella repeated in a voice colourless as her face, heavy as her weary lids, lifeless as her dull black hair. "You said that you had struck harder than you meant in your anger. And so, I thought, had I! Oh, so you let me thinks had I!"

      "Well, I didn't strike her, nor kill her. The man here has just told you I didn't. He said truly enough, that the studio meetings had nothing to do with the murder. That means I didn't kill her, eh? My only reason for killing her would have been because of them. Cristo! She deserved to die, but I did not do justice on her," di Monti snarled.

      "Justice! You to talk of justice, Giulio! What justice have I had from you? When you told me that you had killed Rose, you killed something in me, too. I'm not the woman to love a murderer, but at least I could dream of what might have been if I hadn't sent you there. You've taken even my dream from me now!"

      Sibella finished in a sort of forlorn whisper. Di Monti made a gesture towards her, but Pointer cut in, "And why did you tell the police that Miss Charteris was afraid of some one or some thing?" Pointer's voice was very cold and official. "She was. But of you. You knew that her fears pointed to you, and you alone. Besides, it does not necessarily follow that there was no other reason for putting her out of the way than anger or jealousy." He turned to Sibella, "Would you СКАЧАТЬ