“I’m not in the habit of making jokes in the wrong places,” was her answer. There was a sudden warmth about her personality that had not been there before. It was as if the prospect of the prize she contemplated had thawed some of her coolness. Her eyes dilated and sparkled.
“It’s the last trick, Charles,” she told him softly. “The last trick of the game. I’ll win it . . . and then we’ll finish.” She paused and then continued: “A million to share between us. Do you want to stay with me, Charles? Or do you want to get out?”
He began to speak, but she interrupted him: “If you’re going to stay, don’t forget it’s on my terms. You’ll do what I say without question. You’ll obey my instructions because there’ll be a reason for it. Understand? Either that, or play the hand out on your own and get out of here now. Make up your mind.”
The other gave her that wolfish, mirthless grin and raised his glass to her.
“Whatever you say, Cleo,” he responded hoarsely. “I’m with you all the way.” She noticed his hand trembled violently so that the whisky slopped over the glass, and she smiled to herself. It was a smile without a vestige of humour in it.
Gresham put down his drink and passed his handkerchief over his forehead that was suddenly glistening. She indicated the telegram she was still holding:
“So you went to his flat? What did you find?”
The other cleared his throat and there was a firmness in his tone as he answered: “To say the least of it, that telegram is pretty oddly worded. ‘X’, of course, obviously refers to Xavier. But that bit about ‘If anything happens see Purple Lake’—what the hell was all that about? And then who was this chap, Zusky, who was going to be at Albany’s flat tonight?”
Cleo Latimer made no comment and the other went on:
“It was the reference to the Purple Lake that rang a bell,” he said. “I remembered a picture Albany had at the flat. It was a small picture. Oil-painting of a lake with some trees round it, in the evening. And the shadows on the water made it look a sort of purple colour.”
“That was very smart of you to remember it, Charles,” Mrs. Latimer murmured.
“Oh, I’m not dumb all the time,” he responded, and there was an edge to his voice.
“You were saying about this picture,” she reminded him.
“I wondered what was so important about it that made it necessary for this Zusky to mention it in the telegram. Of course the most obvious suggestion was that the picture covered up a wall-safe. If that was the case, I thought it would be interesting to see what that wall-safe contained.”
“And so you thought you’d like to poke your nose into something which you knew nothing about and which might land you into a jam?”
He glared at her. “Why do you have to put it that way, Cleo? You know as well as I do that if Albany talks, we’re sunk. Supposing I could have got something on him, it might have been useful to us both. That telegram looked like a godsend to me, and I was damn’ well going to make the most of it.”
“How did you get into the flat?”
“Fire-escape.”
“All sounds very melodramatic!”
“Sneer if you like,” he retorted. “I didn’t want anyone to know I’d been near there tonight—considering what’s happened to Albany.”
“And you’re sure no one did see you there?”
“I’m positive,” he said.
“Supposing this man Zusky had arrived while you were there?” she asked him quietly.
He paused a moment before replying. “That was a risk I had to run.” Then he said: “Anyway, he didn’t arrive.”
“Didn’t he?” Her question was put quietly, almost negligently, and he shot her a puzzled look.
“I told you,” he snarled. “No one saw me at Albany’s flat tonight.”
She made no comment and he went on: “The picture of the Purple Lake was there, all right, and I took it down.”
“Well?”
“There was nothing behind it.”
“So?” she said, eyeing him narrowly.
“I was convinced that picture pointed to something,” he went on grimly. “Why else should it have been mentioned in that telegram——”
“You already said that,” she reminded him.
“Cut it out, Cleo!” he rasped. “That funny stuff won’t help us.”
“It doesn’t look as if your snooping round Albany’s flat has helped us much, either,” she rapped back at him. Then added wearily: “Anyway, what did you do next?”
“I went through the sitting-room with a fine tooth-comb, but I didn’t hit on a thing. Then I tried his bedroom, but I didn’t turn up anything there, either.”
“You must have left the place in a fine old mess by the time you’d finished,” she mocked him.
He shrugged. “I didn’t worry about that. I had to work fast——”
He broke off suddenly to stare at her. Cleo Latimer’s lovely face was deathly pale and deep shadows had appeared under her eyes.
“Cleo! What’s the matter?” he said.
“I—I’ll be all right in a minute.” She spoke in a painful gasp and sank into a chair. He crossed to her anxiously.
“Here, take a drink,” he said, holding out his glass. But she waved it aside.
“Don’t—don’t fuss!” she murmured.
He stood there indecisively watching her. He noticed with relief that the colour was slowly coming back to her face.
“Feeling better?” he said.
She nodded. The shadows that had been under her eyes were disappearing with her pallor.
“Just—just an attack of faintness,” she said.
“My God, you scared me,” he growled. “Thought you were going to pass out on me.”
She gave him a stiff little smile. “Don’t overdo the anxiety stuff, Charles.”
As he began a vigorous protest, she went on: “Give me a cigarette.”
She took one from his case and fitted it into her holder, and he lit it for her. “So the Purple Lake didn’t get you anywhere?” she queried. “What happened next?”
He hesitated. “Well . . . I left.”
“By the fire-escape?”
He nodded. “No one saw me.”
“You seem so sure about that. How do you know?”
“I took damn’ good care——”
She laughed shortly. “All right, all right! I don’t suppose you were seen.”
She paused a moment and then asked suddenly: “By the way, where’s that gun?”
He took the small black automatic from his pocket.
“I’d better get rid of it,” he said.
“Give it me.” She extended her hand.
Reluctantly he let her take it and she slipped it into the rosewood secretaire. She leaned against it for a moment and then picked up the telegram again.
“Did you notice where this was sent from?”
“Haywards Heath,” Gresham answered promptly, and then broke off with an exclamation: “Albany’s got a place down there! Stormhaven Towers.”
Mrs. Latimer nodded.
“You mean—you mean that’s where this chap’s been staying?” the other asked.
“It seems obvious. Albany’s a great friend of Xavier. It looks as if Zusky’s been staying down there.”
“I thought the place had been shut up for the last year or two.”
“That was the impression Albany gave me, too,” she said. “Perhaps that was the impression he intended to give us.”
Gresham glanced at her sharply. Her face was enigmatic.
“What is all this?” he burst out. “Xavier and Albany—and now this fellow, Zusky! What is your game? How do these three tie up with that million quid? Xavier can’t have that amount of money. He’s just another refugee who was lucky to get out with the clothes he stood up in. Surely you haven’t got any damn’-fool idea that he——”
“I’ve already told you not to ask questions.” She froze him into silence. “Don’t let me
have to keep on telling you. I find it a little boring.”
He eyed her from beneath brows drawn together in puzzlement. Then he shrugged.
“Have it your own way,” he muttered. “For half a million, I’m happy to let you do the talking.”
“I’m worried about Albany,” she said thoughtfully. “Thanks to you, he may still be able to throw a spanner in the works.”
“I can still take care of him,” Gresham burst out. “It was just bad luck this evening——”
“I know, I know,” she told him. “But I can’t risk your being unlucky again.”
“What are you going to do about it?” he demanded truculently.
“Find out what’s happened to him. I’ll call round at his flat in the morning.”
“Isn’t that a bit risky? The police’ll be there and——”
“Shut up,” she snapped. “When I want your advice, I’ll ask for it—and heaven help me from ever having to do that!”
He began to mutter something, but she went on firmly:
“I’m not to know anything about what happened last night. I wasn’t even at Lady Tonbridge’s, so I don’t even know he didn’t turn up there. I shall be paying him a call in the ordinary way. If the police are there, I ought to be able to bluff them into telling me if he’s dead or alive. If he’s alive, I’ll dig out of them where he is.”
She drew at her cigarette and slowly blew a cloud of smoke ceilingwards. He looked at her with covert admiration.
“You’ve got a nerve all right, Cleo,” he exclaimed thickly. “You’re a woman in a million.”
“With a million,” she corrected him softly. “Very soon.”
Chapter Twelve – Detective-Inspector Hood
Detective-Inspector Hood drew at his old briar, which bubbled noisily, and slowly expelled a great cloud of somewhat acrid smoke as he eyed the individual before him.
It was the morning following the discovery of the body in the bathroom and Hood had taken over the job of solving the mystery. The late Stefan Zusky, upon whom the police-surgeon had delivered his pronouncement, had been removed. The police photographers and fingerprint experts had completed their work and the Inspector, aided by a stenographer with his notebook, was now engaged upon eliciting what information he could from the porter of the flats.
The detective made a sturdy, alert figure as he clamped his teeth over his pipe-stem. Apart from its bizarre aspects which indicated that this was no ordinary murder, his interest in its investigation was not inconsiderably heightened when he learned that Doctor Morelle had already made an appearance at the scene of the crime.
Inspector Hood and Doctor Morelle were old friends* [* See the Case-books Meet Doctor Morelle and Meet Doctor Morelle Again] and, while he deplored the Doctor’s arbitrarily condescending and superior attitude, at the same time he was forced to admit a profound respect for his deductive gifts. And, intermingled with this admiration, there was a sneaking, if inexplicable, warmheartedness towards him which the detective found difficult to comprehend. The occasions upon which Doctor Morelle’s heart ever appeared to attain a temperature higher than that of an iceberg were rare indeed.
The man upon whom Detective-Inspector Hood now bent his gaze shifted uneasily and rubbed his hands nervously down the sides of his trousers.
“Your name’s Arthur Burton?” Hood queried. “And you’ve been employed as porter at these flats for twelve years?”
“That’s right.”
“You live here?”
“That’s right. On the ground floor.”
“Anything happen last night which you thought sounded suspicious?”
“Nothing at all, Inspector. It was a terrible shock to me when the police come and said they wanted to get into the flat.”
Hood eyed him contemplatively.
“Doesn’t it strike you as a bit odd,” he grunted, “that someone could come up here last night, fire off a gun and you not hear it?”
The other looked troubled. For a long moment he hesitated. Then he said:
“I dunno how to answer that question and that’s a fact. All I can say is I never heard no guns let off up here at any time. This flat’s on the sixth floor and the one underneath is unoccupied at the moment—tenant’s away—and I should think it would be possible to fire a gun and nobody hear it. But I dunno.”
“Anyway, you didn’t hear anything? About ten o’clock, it would be.”
“If I had, I’d have remembered. Me and my missus went to the pictures. But we was back a bit before ten. We had a cup of tea before we went to bed. Oh—I went down to the boiler-house just to make sure everything was okay. I made up the boiler for the night.”
“How long were you in the boiler-house?”
“Five or ten minutes, I’d say.”
“And you didn’t see or hear anyone come in or go out?”
“No, I didn’t. As soon as I’d finished in the boiler-house, I went off to bed like I said. Next thing I knew was the police arriving. That’d be about half past twelve.”
Hood’s pipe bubbled somewhat alarmingly. He asked:
“What do you know about this Sir Hugh Albany?”
“Dunno as I know much about him,” the porter answered promptly. “I’m the porter here. He’s a tenant.” He added: “Makes a bit o’ difference.”
The Inspector gave the other a gentle smile.
“How long’s he had the flat?”
“Before I come here,” was the reply.
“Was he the sort who had many visitors?”
“I suppose you might say he was,” the other said judiciously. “People used to come and go, like. He used to be quite lively one time. Lots of parties and things going on. But of course he’s a bit quieter now.”
“Why ‘of course’?”
“Well . . . there’s his fiancée,” the porter explained. “Miss Carfax. Been going pretty steady for some time, they have, and I expect that’s made him a bit quieter. Preparing for when they was properly spliced, you might say.”
“You saw the dead man before he was taken away?” Hood asked.
The other nodded silently.
“Recognize him at all?”
Burton shook his head. “Never seen him before,” he declared emphatically.
“Sure?”
“Sure as I can be of anything, and that’s a fact. I’m upset about this wot’s happened—and perhaps I’m not quite so quick on the uptake as I might be—but of one thing I’m certain, and that is I never see that chap before. Unless he looked very different-like when he was alive.”
“All right, Burton. That’s about the lot for now. You’d better carry on as usual. I’ll let you know if there’s anything else I want to ask you.”
As the porter quitted the sitting-room, a policeman came in.
“Doctor Morelle has just arrived, sir. Miss Frayle is with him.”
Inspector Hood moved into the hall.
“I’d heard you’d interested yourself in this business, Doctor,” he greeted Doctor Morelle. “How d’you do, Miss Frayle.”
Miss Frayle blushed a little with pleasure at the specially nice smile the Inspector bestowed on her.
“How d’you do, Inspector Hood,” she said and added, with a little sigh: “I wish we didn’t always seem to be meeting in circumstances so gloomy.”
Doctor Morelle glanced at her and his thin lips tightened.
“Before Miss Frayle launches upon a sea of empty super-ficialities, Inspector,” he observed icily, “might I inquire if there have been any further developments in the case you are investigating?”
“Nothing very remarkable,” the other answered, leading the way into the disordered sitting-room. “Been trying to get a line on Sir Hugh Albany’s friends and acquaintances. Trouble is, his type know so many people.”
“Do I detect the inference that you consider the attack upon Albany and the murder of the Baron’s secretary as being linked together?”
“It’s a possibility,” Hood replied slow
ly. “On the other hand, even if there is no connection, it is still a likely assumption that whoever bumped off Zusky did know Albany.”
“You mean because the poor man was murdered in Sir Hugh’s flat?” Miss Frayle put in.
Hood nodded. “That’s the idea,” he said. He paused, then went on: “Seems Sir Hugh Albany’s in a pretty bad way. I ’phoned the nursing-home, but there doesn’t seem to be much possibility of my being able to get a statement from him yet.”
“His condition may be described as dangerous,” Doctor Morelle said, lighting an inevitable Le Sphinx. Through the cloud of cigarette-smoke his narrowed eyes moved round the room. “There’s a suspicion that, as a result of the bullet-wound, a fragment of the skull is pressing on the left frontal lobe,” he went on.
“Won’t that mean an operation?” Hood asked.
The Doctor brought his gaze to bear upon the other with a faint smile.
“I note,” he observed, “your perception is not merely confined to police investigation, but extends into the realms of medicine.”
Inspector Hood grinned at him good-humouredly.
“Oh yes,” he replied, “we flat-footed bloodhounds do pick up a bit of knowledge now and again, apart from spotting the slip the criminal makes. Especially,” he added, “when we’re lucky enough to come into contact with certain eminent minds rom whom a dull-witted cop cannot help picking up a few crumbs of wisdom.” And he winked at Miss Frayle.
She gave him a quick, delighted smile and turned to see how Doctor Morelle had taken Hood’s somewhat heavy-handed shaft. To her amazement, instead of the cold, supercilious expression she expected to see on his saturnine features, his eyes were twinkling with amusement and he was actually chuckling.
Good gracious me! she thought. He’s laughing. . . . Then she glanced at him more sharply, with a little worried frown. Could it be, she asked herself, that he’s sickening for something? Her conjectures in this direction, however, were interrupted by his reply to the detective.
“You flatter me, my dear Inspector,” he said simply. Then: “In point of fact, Owen is performing the operation this morning.”
“Sir David Owen,” Miss Frayle supplied, and added enthusiastically, “He’s a wonderful surgeon——”
Menace for Dr. Morelle Page 7