Room Number 3, and Other Detective Stories. Анна Грин

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      "I can swear to it. I even caught his expression. It was malignant in the extreme, quite unlike that he usually turns upon his guests."

      "Which window was it?"

      Hammersmith pointed it out.

      "You have been there? Searched the room and the stable?"

      "Thoroughly, just as soon as it was light enough to see."

      "And found——"

      "Nothing; not even a clue."

      "The man is lying dead in that heap. She, too, perhaps. We'll have to put the screws on Jake. A conspiracy like this must be unearthed. Show me the rascal."

      "He's in a most careless mood. He doesn't think his master and mistress perished in the fire."

      "Careless, eh? Well, we'll see. I know that sort."

      But when a few minutes later he came to confront the clerk he saw that his task was not likely to prove quite so easy as his former experience had led him to expect. Save for a slight nervous trembling of limb and shoulder—surely not unnatural after such a night—Jake bore himself with very much the same indifferent ease he had shown the day before.

      Doctor Golden surveyed him with becoming sternness.

      "At what time did this fire start?" he asked.

      Jake had a harsh voice, but he mellowed it wonderfully as he replied:

      "Somewhere about one. I don't carry a watch, so I don't know the exact time."

      "The exact time isn't necessary. Near one answers well enough. How came you to be completely dressed at near one in a country tavern like this?"

      "I was on watch. There was death in the house."

      "Then you were in the house?"

      "Yes." His tongue faltered, but not his gaze; that was as direct as ever. "I was in the house, but not at the moment the fire started. I had gone to the stable to get a newspaper. My room is in the stable, the little one high in the cock-loft. I did not find the paper at once and when I did I stopped to read a few lines. I'm a slow reader, and by the time I was ready to cross back to the house, smoke was pouring out of the rear windows, and I stopped short, horrified! I'm mortally afraid of fire."

      "You have shown it. I have not heard that you raised the least alarm."

      "I'm afraid you're right. I lost my head like a fool. You see, I've never lived anywhere else for the last ten years, and to see my home on fire was more than I could stand. You wouldn't think me so weak to look at these muscles."

      Baring his arm, he stared down at it with a forlorn shake of his head. The coroner glanced at Hammersmith. What sort of fellow was this! A giant with the air of a child, a rascal with the smile of a humourist. Delicate business, this; or were they both deceived and the man just a good-humoured silly?

      Hammersmith answered the appeal by a nod toward an inner door. The coroner understood and turned back to Jake with the seemingly irrelevant inquiry:

      "Where did you leave Mr. Quimby when you went to the cock-loft?"

      "In the house?"

      "Asleep?"

      "No, he was making up his accounts."

      "In the office?"

      "Yes."

      "And that was where you left him?"

      "Yes, it was."

      "Then, how came he to be looking out of your window just before the fire broke out?"

      "He?" Jake's jaw fell and his enormous shoulders drooped; but only for a moment. With something between a hitch and a shrug, he drew himself upright and with some slight display of temper cried out, "Who says he was there?"

      The coroner answered him. "The man behind you. He saw him."

      Jake's hand closed in a nervous grip. Had the trigger been against his finger at that moment it would doubtless have been snapped with some satisfaction, so the barrel had been pointing at Hammersmith.

      "Saw him distinctly," the coroner repeated. "Mr. Quimby's face is not to be mistaken."

      "If he saw him," retorted Jake, with unexpected cunning, "then the flames had got a start. One don't see in the dark. They hadn't got much of a start when I left. So he must have gone up to my room after I came down."

      "It was before the alarm was given; before Mr. Hammersmith here had crawled out of his room window."

      "I can't help that, sir. It was after I left the stable. You can't mix me up with Quimby's doings."

      "Can't we? Jake, you're no lawyer and you don't know how to manage a lie. Make a clean breast of it. It may help you and it won't hurt Quimby. Begin with the old lady's coming. What turned Quimby against her? What's the plot?"

      "I don't know of any plot. What Quimby told you is true. You needn't expect me to contradict it!"

      A leaden doggedness had taken the place of his whilom good nature. Nothing is more difficult to contend with. Nothing is more dreaded by the inquisitor. Hammersmith realised the difficulties of the situation and repeated the gesture he had previously made toward the door leading into an adjoining compartment. The coroner nodded as before and changed the tone of his inquiry.

      "Jake," he declared, "you are in a more serious position than you realise. You may be devoted to Quimby, but there are others who are not. A night such as you have been through quickens the conscience of women if it does not that of men. One has been near death. The story of such a woman is apt to be truthful. Do you want to hear it? I have no objections to your doing so."

      "What story? I don't know of any story. Women have easy tongues; they talk even when they have nothing to say."

      "This woman has something to say, or why should she have asked to be confronted with you? Have her in, Mr. Hammersmith. I imagine that a sight of this man will make her voluble."

      A sneer from Jake; but when Hammersmith, crossing to the door I've just mentioned, opened it and let in Huldah, this token of bravado gave way to a very different expression and he exclaimed half ironically, half caressingly:

      "Why, she's my sweetheart! What can she have to say except that she was mighty fortunate not to have been burned up in the fire last night?"

      Doctor Golden and the detective crossed looks in some anxiety. They had not been told of this relation between the two, either by the girl herself or by the others. Gifted with a mighty close mouth, she had nevertheless confided to Hammersmith that she could tell things and would, if he brought her face to face with the man who tried to shoot him while he was helping her down from the roof. Would her indignation hold out under the insinuating smile with which the artful rascal awaited her words? It gave every evidence of doing so, for her eye flashed threateningly and her whole body showed the tension of extreme feeling as she came hastily forward, and pausing СКАЧАТЬ