‘Hullo, Santos!’ he exclaimed. ‘Anything you want, my boy? I was just starting to undress.’
‘You ought to lock your door,’ said Loreto, walking into the old man’s room. ‘Have you a valet with you?’
‘No. I didn’t bring him down. Fact is, Fletcher is a shrewd, discreet fellow, and I sent him along to Cranbridge to keep an eye on the detectives who are guarding Kitty. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’
The old man chuckled over the tag, but Loreto was making a thorough examination of the big bedroom, and assuring himself that the windows were securely fastened, and that no one was concealed in the room.
‘You must be careful, Sir George,’ he urged. ‘Remember that your life is threatened, even in this house. This room seems secure enough, but you must lock your door and bolt it.’
He added the last words as he turned towards the door and saw that there were inside bolts at the top and bottom.
‘All right, my boy,’ said the old man, good-humouredly. ‘I like to read for an hour before sleeping, and Otisse is to bring me along a book of his on Brazil. Directly he’s gone, I’ll lock, bolt, and bar. Good night, my boy. Thanks so much.’
With this assurance Loreto had to be content. He went upstairs to his own room, but it was a long time before he could sleep.
***
It was very improbable that Sir George would be in danger for this one night, and to-morrow Loreto would see that the absent-minded old man was properly guarded. Yet for an hour Loreto tossed sleeplessly upon his bed, thinking of anyone who could threaten or harm Sir George Frame. The French explorer was taking a book to the baronet’s room, but Otisse was all right, and had been in Brazil when the ‘Death Diary Murders’ had been committed.
Sir George’s windows were secure; there was no way of entry except by the door, or smashing a window, which would raise an alarm.
And upon this thought Loreto fell at last into a troubled sleep, and awoke with the autumn sun streaming across his face.
It was after nine o’clock, and consequently rather late when Loreto descended to the breakfast-room. Most of the house-party had gone to tennis or the links, but Lady Groombridge herself was breakfasting, and with her were Otisse, Adam Steele, and Lionel Silk. There were also four women, among whom was Cleta, who waxed ironical about her brother’s tardiness.
‘Let him be, my dear,’ said Lady Groombridge, tolerantly. ‘He’s not the last.’
‘I slept rather badly,’ explained Loreto.
‘I always do,’ drawled Lionel Silk. ‘The night is such a wonderful time to dream, but one should never sleep whilst one dreams. How we waste those wonderful hours of silence and moonlight in vulgar sleep!’
Adam Steele laughed loudly.
‘Silk wants a “Moonlight Saving Bill”,’ he suggested.
‘The lovers would applaud that,’ said Otisse. ‘Really we should ask Sir George Frame to propose the Bill in Parliament.’
‘By the way,’ said Lady Groombridge, sharply, ‘Sir George is very late, and he’s usually an early riser.’
A parlourmaid was in the room at the moment, and the girl put in a word.
‘I have just knocked at Sir George’s door, m’lady,’ she said. ‘I knocked hard, but I could get no answer. I noticed that his shaving water hadn’t been taken in and it was cold.’
Lady Groombridge glared at the girl and then at her guests.
‘That’s strange,’ she said. ‘You knocked hard?’
‘Did you try the door?’ asked Otisse, quickly.
‘No, sir,’ said the maid. ‘I just knocked.’
‘I don’t like this,’ said Lady Groombridge, and a note of anxiety crept into her voice as she looked about her.
A swift feeling of apprehension swept suddenly over everyone. A woman put the general thought into words.
‘Sir George was a friend of Lilian Hope. Suppose—’
The men were on their feet now, and Steele’s chair overturned with a crash.
‘I’ll have a look,’ he cried, and, in his quick, impetuous fashion, he was out of the room and dashing up the broad staircase before the others. Loreto and Otisse were a yard behind the Australian; Silk, Lady Groombridge, and the other women brought up the rear.
In five seconds Steele was at the baronet’s bedroom door, and was rattling the handle and calling loudly.
‘Sir George!’ he shouted. ‘Sir George!’
But there was no answer, and the Australian threw himself against the door.
‘It’s locked,’ he panted. ‘I can’t move it.’
‘Knock a panel in,’ said Otisse, quietly. ‘Here use this.’
Accustomed to alarms, the little French explorer had all his wits about him. Now he snatched from the wall a Crusader’s mace, which, with other weapons and armour, decorated the passage.
‘That’s right,’ boomed Lady Groombridge, ‘beat in the panels, Mr. Steele. Don’t hesitate.’
Thus encouraged, Adam Steele acted swiftly. Calling for elbow space, he swung his heavy weapon, and in three blows had one of the door panels in splinters. Through the jagged hole his arm went to the shoulder, and there was the click of a turning key.
‘There’s a bolt at the top and bottom, Mr. Steele,’ called Lady Groombridge. ‘Can you reach them?’
‘I think so,’ said Steele, straining, and red in the face.
Loreto felt a hand clutch his arm, and looked round at the pale face of Cleta.
‘What do you think has happened, Loreto?’ asked the girl, but before he could answer there was a metallic snapping of bolts, and the door was pushed open.
‘Mon Dieu!’ said Otisse, softly, and a woman suddenly screamed, for now the horrified party could see directly into the room.
And there, in the middle of the apartment, some way from his bed, lay Sir George Frame. He lay flat upon his face, one arm doubled under him, the other outstretched. One thin white hand showed upon the dark blue carpet, the fingers spread, and flattened out like a starfish.
Otisse was first beside the body, and made a quick examination.
‘I’m afraid he’s dead,’ said the explorer. ‘Stabbed with a knife in the back. Keep the women away.’
The women, in fact, after one terrified look, withdrew slowly and returned downstairs to await further news. Lady Groombridge alone remained in the room, and she was looking about her in bewilderment.
‘How was this dreadful thing done?’ she asked. ‘The windows are bolted on the inside, the chimney is impassable. Who can have done it?’
‘The “Diary Murderer”,’ said Santos, and pointed to a crumpled scrap of paper with one jagged edge that lay beside the body. Stooping, he picked up the diary page covered with its scrawling hand-writing, and exclaimed aloud. On the paper was printed a date, the seventeenth of September.
‘To-day’s date!’ he cried. ‘This murderer certainly has method.’
‘But who can have done it, and where is he?’ wailed Lady Groombridge. ‘This room is practically sealed at all points.’
‘That’s true,’ cried Steele. ‘By Jove! The man may be hidden here now!’
He, Otisse, Silk, and the lady began to search the apartment, looking in cupboards, behind curtains, under the bed, and in the bed itself. They began with likely hiding-places, and ended by searching fantastically.
Otisse clicked his tongue in the impatient manner of a clever man who is baffled.
‘But this is extraordinary,’ he exclaimed. ‘It was humanly impossible to enter this room unless there is a secret passage.’
He turned questioningly to Lady Groombridge, but she shook her head.
‘This is a modern house, built by my late husband,’ she said. ‘I know the place thoroughly, and I can assure you there is no secret passage, and the walls are not thick enough for such trickiness.’
‘
But how on earth was the murder committed, then?’ said Steele. ‘There is no sign of a weapon, and this poor old man has been stabbed with a knife.’
Lionel Silk, meanwhile, was walking about the room, tapping the walls, while Lady Groombridge glared at him.
‘I tell you, Mr. Silk, there is nothing of that sort here,’ she said. ‘If you wish, I can show you the architect’s plan of the house.’
Loreto, meanwhile, stared down at the dead man with thoughtful eyes. The body was clad in pyjamas and a dressing-gown, which was open as though the garment had been put on hurriedly. A small electric reading-lamp still burned beside the bed upon an occasional table, and on the bed itself was a book on Brazil by Henri Otisse. A pair of gold-rimmed spectacles were folded in the book.
Otisse came to Loreto’s side, and the Frenchman’s face was pale beneath its tan.
‘This is awful, Santos,’ he whispered. ‘How was the thing done?’
‘He was reading your book,’ Loreto pointed out. ‘Did you take it to him last night?’
‘No. I met one of the maids going to bed, and I sent the book by her.’ The Frenchman laughed a trifle uneasily. ‘You don’t suspect me of murder, Santos?’
‘No,’ said Loreto, quietly. ‘I only want to establish some definite facts. When, for example, was Frame last seen alive? Later I will interview that maid you sent with the book. I suppose you can remember her?’
‘Certainly,’ said Otisse. ‘I’ll get her now, if you like.’
‘No, later will do,’ replied Santos, and raised his voice. ‘Lady Groombridge,’ he said, ‘I think we had better telephone the police at once. We are not likely to discover anything by looking about in this room. It is police work, anyway. Meanwhile, leave everything exactly as it is.’
‘Very well, Mr. Santos,’ said the lady, with surprising meekness. ‘This is a terribly mysterious thing! Why, a mouse couldn’t get into this room, let alone a man with a knife.’
‘Perhaps it was the ghost of Lilian Hope,’ said Silk, in a deep, melancholy tone. ‘Perhaps she still walks the earth, and avenges herself upon those who betrayed her.’
‘With a knife in one hand and a diary in the other,’ sneered Otisse. ‘It took more than a ghost to kill this poor man.’
***
They all left the room, and Loreto shut the broken door behind him. The local police were telephoned for, and had not been in the house long before Inspector Comfort, of the Criminal Investigation Department, arrived in a car from headquarters.
The Inspector was in charge of the ‘Death Diary’ cases, a fact that had already added one or two grey hairs to his large round head.
He greeted Loreto as an old friend, and then began to carry out the usual police examination.
Later, as he paced a deserted croquet lawn in Lady Groombridge’s grounds, Loreto saw his sister coming towards him.
‘Isn’t this awful?’ asked Cleta. ‘That dear old man! And how was it done? The door was locked and bolted, the windows were latched, and yet Sir George was stabbed to death. Inspector Comfort can make nothing of it.’
Loreto nodded. His eyes were fixed upon a far-off pear tree, and there was an expression in them of thought and concentration that Cleta had seen before. It was a curious, detached gaze, and she had seen it in Loreto’s eyes when he was playing chess, or studying a problem.
‘It is a curious business altogether,’ he said, slowly, and then his tone changed. ‘Cleta, I am going to run up to London for a week,’ he said, more briskly. ‘You will be all right down here, won’t you? I’m going now to make excuses to Lady Groombridge.’
The girl looked at him in surprise, but she was accustomed to these sudden decisions of his.
‘I’ll be all right,’ she replied. ‘Have you got some clue as to who did this, Loreto?’
‘Quien sabe,’ he answered, provokingly, and was halfway across the lawn before she could put a further question.
So for several days Loreto disappeared, and Cleta could only suppose that he was upon his mysterious business in London.
***
Inspector Comfort was completely baffled by the murder and by the evidence that confronted him. Apparently the door of the room had been locked and doubly bolted: the windows were latched securely upon the inside, and the chimney was impassable. There were no secret passages or sliding panels; and certainly no one had been concealed in the murdered man’s room.
Comfort found the maid who had taken Otisse’s book to Sir George Frame. This girl, scarcely seventeen years of age, was apparently the last, except the murderer, to see the baronet alive. She stated that she had taken the book along as directed. She had knocked at the door, and Sir George, in his shirt-sleeves, had opened it. He had thanked her for the book, and as she went away she heard the old man lock his bedroom door.
And yet, in the small hours of the night, someone had entered this locked and barred room and stabbed Sir George Frame to death.
The ‘Death Diary Murderer’ had been avenged, and of his three murders this was the most mysterious. According to the doctor’s evidence, Frame had been killed some hours before the discovery of his body by Lady Groombridge’s guests.
The whole thing puzzled the unfortunate Comfort more than any crime in his experience. He studied the fatal page of the diary, which contained Lilian Hope’s usual denunciations, but told the Inspector nothing. There was the tragic parallel of the dates, but that conveyed little except to shed a light upon the workings of an unbalanced mind.
Nearly a week had passed, when the despairing police-inspector heard his telephone bell ring, and lifted the receiver to listen to Loreto’s cheerful voice.
‘That you, Comfort?’ asked Loreto.
‘Yes, Is that Santos?’
‘His very self! I say, I think I can introduce you to the “Death Diary Murderer”. Yes. Meet me at a quarter to eleven to-morrow morning at Oxsfoot Station. Don’t be a minute late, and bring a couple of men with you. I think our friend will want a little holding.’
There was a click as the wire was closed, and Inspector Comfort jumped to his feet and began to walk excitedly about his office.
Santos was an aggravating devil! He wouldn’t answer questions, and he would indulge in dramatic dénouements, but Comfort knew that he could rely upon his eccentric friend’s promise.
***
The following morning, at twenty minutes to eleven, Inspector Comfort and two plain-clothed detectives arrived at Oxsfoot Railway Station. At precisely a quarter to eleven, Loreto’s big Rolls glided up to the station entrance, and Loreto himself leaned forward from the driver’s seat.
‘Put your men in the back, Comfort,’ he said, ‘and then come and sit beside me.’
A moment later, as Loreto was backing and turning his car, a labourer, on an old-fashioned bicycle, rode beside Loreto and spoke to him.
‘He’s on the Cranbridge road, walking towards the Home,’ said the ‘labourer’, and his voice was that of an educated man. ‘You’ve plenty of time. You can catch him up in five minutes.’
Loreto nodded his thanks and comprehension, and the big car glided forward along a narrow winding country lane.
‘So it’s a man?’ said Comfort, and Loreto nodded.
‘A poor unbalanced devil, Comfort,’ he said. ‘Mad, but cunning, and dangerous as a poisonous snake. The trouble is that you could meet him fifty times, and never suspect him of being mad at all. Of course, his mother was only mad on one point—the mania that she was being persecuted by her former friends.’
‘His mother!’ exclaimed Comfort, looking at his friend’s grim face. Loreto swung his car round a sharp corner and slowed down considerably.
‘Yes, his mother,’ he said, quietly. ‘The man you want is the son of Lilian Hope. An illegitimate son, hidden away from her closest friends. The boy was brought up at a country farm, where his mother s
ecretly visited him during many years. Later he went abroad to the Colonies with money furnished by Lilian Hope. He lost sight of her, and for years thought her dead. Then, when he was a man of thirty, he met in London an old landlady who had known Lilian Hope in her declining years. In this way the grown son became possessed of his mother’s few poor possessions, and among them was the diary.’
Loreto’s voice grew stern, though there was a touch of sadness in his voice as he continued:
‘The man had always been excitable and unbalanced. He had experienced a hard life, and his early love was for his mother. You can imagine such a man reading that terrible diary, poring over every hysterical page, noting each wild denunciation. The thing drove him mad. He kept a diary, too. He wrote pages to his dead mother, and promised her, in writing, that she should be revenged.’
‘And he kept his word,’ said Inspector Comfort, softly. ‘Who is the man?’
The lane suddenly straightened out and the hedges disappeared. At each side there now appeared a common, covered with gorse and bramble, and short grass that ran to the edge of the straight road. In the distance a pleasant red-brick house raised its chimney pots towards the sky, and towards this house a solitary black-clad figure was walking along the road.
‘There,’ said Santos, with a forward jerk of his head. ‘That man on the road is the murderer, and the son of Lilian Hope.’
An exclamation left Comfort’s lips, and he knocked on the glass behind him to arouse the attention of his men. Rigid, and with tense face, the Inspector leaned forward, watching the black speck that grew constantly larger as the big car ran forward.
Now the pedestrian could be seen plainly, a vigorous, thick-set figure dressed in conventional black garb.
‘Great snakes! It’s a clergyman!’ gasped Comfort, and Loreto smiled grimly.
‘Only for this occasion,’ he said. ‘Our friend is visiting the nursing home where Lady Frame lies ill. In the next room to her the local parson is undergoing treatment. I think I see how our friend planned to get at his next victim.’
Miraculous Mysteries Page 17