One Way Out. John Russell Fearn

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “See if the corridor’s quiet,” he instructed. “If it is, get the door open and leave it on the second catch. We’ve got to act fast.”

      Dale did as he was told—for a change. The corridor was empty. He leapt across the brief stretch to the outside door and dropped the window reaching his hand down to the outer catch of the door. Steam and cold wind blew into his eyes.... Then he came back into the compartment to find Lee in the act of hauling the girl’s dead weight from the seat.

      “Okay,” Lee wheezed. “Out with her. Grab hold.”

      Dale obeyed and grabbed the girl’s ankles. Then with the body slumped between them they shuffled quickly across the small intervening stretch of still deserted corridor to the partly unlatched door.

      “Right,” Lee panted. “Leave her to me. I’ve got her.”

      With an effort Lee propped the girl up on her feet, taking her sagging weight against his own shoulder. He reached with one hand to open the door, and then shoved. The door opened slowly against the pressure of the wind and the girl reeled outwards into the night and was gone. The door slammed shut again as Lee pulled it.

      He looked at Dale and they went back into their compartment, mopping their sweating faces. At last Dale said:

      “I still don’t know if we did the right thing.”

      “There was no other way, sir—and good luck was with us in that the corridor was empty.”

      Lee looked about him and then methodically collected the odds and ends from the seat, the accusing note included, and put them all back in the handbag together with the strychnine bottle’s cardboard container. Still with the same calmness he put the handbag in his briefcase and buckled the straps.

      “It would be better if I kept the handbag,” he said, as Dale watched him. “You mustn’t have the slightest hint of that girl having been anywhere near you. At a convenient moment I’ll destroy everything.”

      “Fair enough,” Dale muttered, pulling his hat and coat from the rack. “Better start getting ready, Lee—we’re coming into the station from the look of things.”

      Lee said nothing. For a reason best known to himself he was smiling....

      CHAPTER TWO

      BLACKMAIL

      Because at heart he was a straightforward man, the affair of Janice Elton weighed heavily on Morgan Dale’s mind. He kept thinking about her, about the ruthless dumping of her corpse on the railway track. It was a memory that kept returning to him, all the time he was busy with business negotiations in Scotland.... The next day there was only the briefest announcement about her in the newspaper: her body had been found but as yet her identity was unknown.

      “But they will find out who she is,” Dale insisted the next evening to Lee. “They’re bound to! Laundry marks, or some item like that. They’ll discover in time that she was once my personal secretary—and from there the thing will go on.”

      “Let it.” Lee shrugged, apparently quite indifferent. “They can’t do a thing to you, sir, not as long as I’m willing to swear that you were with me all the time. Don’t worry so.”

      Dale said nothing. He stared at the end of his cigar absently as he held it in his hand. He and Lee were in the lounge of their hotel, clearing up the final details before their return to London on the morrow.

      “Y’know,” Dale said finally, “the police will be bound to find out that I booked a compartment on the Scots Express. They will assume it more than unusual that my ex-secretary should be on the same train.”

      Lee gave his slow smile. “They can assume all they like, sir, but the law cannot operate on an assumption—only on incontestable facts and witnesses, Otherwise you’re protected by the provision of the ‘reasonable doubt’. Anyway, it’s not certain that she fell from the Scots Express. It’s not even certain that she fell from a train at all.”

      “Her scratches and bruises where she hit the gravel chippings will be all the police will need in that direction.... The police are not a gang of halfwits, Lee; they’ll find out from the booking office or somewhere that Janice took the Scots Express. It may be months before they do find out—but they will.”

      “If you’re determined to worry yourself to a shadow, sir, I’m afraid there isn’t much I can do.”

      “I can’t help but worry. I almost feel as though I really murdered her.”

      “But you didn’t, sir—so you say.”

      Dale stared. “So I say! Good God, man, you believe me, don’t you?”

      “Implicitly, sir. And the police, if they ever catch up, will have to do the same thing—which they will with me to back you up.” Lee reflected over something, then he said quietly, “We’d better fix up these business matters, hadn’t we, sir?”

      “Yes, I suppose so....” Dale made a bothered movement. “Wish I could concentrate better.”

      Somehow he succeeded in dissociating his mind from the real problem and gave all his attention to the matter on hand—but the moment he relaxed the old ghost returned. Throughout the night, as he tried to sleep, he kept seeing the body of Janice Elton disappearing through the train doorway into the night. He wished he had the detachment of Martin Lee—but then, when he came to think of it, Lee could afford to be detached. He had been out in the corridor when the girl had killed herself, therefore he had nothing particular to worry about.

      Dale felt better when he got back to London and placed something like two hundred and fifty miles between himself and the scene of the tragedy. It gave him a sense of security, however false, and as day succeeded day he managed to so involve himself in business affairs that the fate of Janice Elton touched him, but little. He even felt proud that he had not betrayed his secret worry in any way. His wife had not the least suspicion that he was troubled about anything, and his children were all married and away from home so he didn’t have to bother to hide his feelings from them. The only person who knew anything was Martin Lee and he seemed as though he couldn’t care less and never referred to the matter—unless it was to draw Dale’s attention to some item of newspaper news, which he might have missed. Usually, he hadn’t; no man was more avid for a newspaper than Morgan Dale.

      The disturbing fact was that the police were apparently making progress in their ‘body on the line’ problem. They had got as far as discovering that the girl, still unidentified, had been thrown from a train after being murdered. Her various abrasions, according to the forensic department, proved this. Also, pathology had shown that strychnine had been administered in a dose of 11.75 grains—and the last thing the police seemed to believe was the possibility of suicide. Nor was there any mention of the poison bottle being found in her clenched fingers....

      Disquieting facts, which gave Morgan Dale a good deal to think about. The only thing he could cling to was the obvious one: that he had not committed murder or even touched the girl.

      Then, a fortnight after the events on the Scots Express, things took a turn—and in a most unpleasant way as far as Morgan Dale was concerned. He was busy in his private office one morning when Lee entered, thin, smiling, with a curious glitter of satisfaction in his eyes.

      “Yes?” Dale asked briefly, without looking up from the work СКАЧАТЬ