by Molly Thynne
Still intent on her mission she hurried to Lady Dalberry’s bedroom. The door was standing open and she went in.
The room was empty. She looked into the dressing-room and drew a blank there. Then, seeing the curtains waving in the breeze from the open window, she even went so far as to step on to the balcony that ran past the three bedrooms on that side of the house. There was no one there. Evidently Lady Dalberry had decided to remain at her club after all.
Carol stood for a while at the open window, looking out over the dark expanse of the garden that lay behind the flats, her mind busy with this fresh proof of her aunt’s treachery. For, if Lady Dalberry had eyes in her head, she must have seen what had happened. Carol was now faced with the disquieting fact that she was definitely cut off from outside help should she require it, and the situation was made none the pleasanter by her conviction that whoever had severed the wires had done so with her aunt’s connivance. With an increasing sense of foreboding she turned from the window and made her way to her own room.
She was half-way down the passage when the thing happened that put even the disablement of the telephone completely out of her head.
She heard a movement behind her. So on edge were her nerves that she turned sharply and stood, her hands clenched, prepared to find de Silva waiting for her.
To the girl’s amazement Lady Dalberry was standing on the threshold of the empty room she had just left. She was dressed in a loose tea-gown and had evidently not been out, as Carol had supposed.
“So you are back,” she said pleasantly. “I thought I heard your key in the door. Was your evening amusing?”
Carol was too bewildered to answer her question.
“But, Aunt Irma,” she exclaimed, “where were you? I’ve just been to your room and you weren’t there then! Where have you come from?”
Lady Dalberry’s face betrayed nothing but mild incredulity.
“But that is impossible,” she returned. “If you were in my room I must have heard you. You could not have looked very carefully, my dear.”
“But I did,” Carol insisted. “I found the door open and went in, and you weren’t there. I even looked in the dressing-room, and there wasn’t a sign of you.”
“All the same, if you had called to me or looked on the balcony you would have seen me,” Lady Dalberry assured her placidly. “I suppose you thought I was out when you could not find me.”
Carol was about to tell her that she had not only looked, but had actually stepped out on to the balcony, when some instinct warned her not to give voice to her suspicions.
“I thought you were at the club,” she answered, trying to speak lightly. “I concluded that the bridge mania had proved too strong for you.”
Lady Dalberry shook her head.
“I could not face all those people at the club to-night,” she said, so pathetically that, if her mind had not been full of other, more perturbing, things, Carol might have felt sorry for her.
As it was, she said good-night as quickly as possible and went to her room. Once there she sat over the fire seeking in vain for a clue to this new problem. Where had her aunt been when she was searching for her in the bedroom? Carol had a growing conviction that she had been nowhere in the flat. And yet it was obvious that she could only have come from her own room when Carol saw her, for there had not been time for her to reach the doorway from either the hall door or any of the other rooms in the flat.
When at last, chilled and stiff with sitting over a dying fire, she rose to undress, she locked the door carefully and even placed a chair behind it in such a position that it was bound to fall if any one attempted to enter the room. Then, contrary to her usual custom, she closed and locked the French windows that gave on to the balcony, pushing the heavy dressing-table across them.
Then she went to bed, but, in spite of her precautions, she slept badly and rose unrefreshed. For the first time her resolve to see this thing through was thoroughly shaken, and she admitted to being thankful that, owing to Mellish’s insistence, she would spend only one more night in her aunt’s flat.
CHAPTER XVIII
Lady Dalberry’s manoeuvres had already lost Carol a sleepless night, but it would have been even more disturbed if she could have followed her aunt’s movements during the early part of the evening.
When Lady Dalberry left the flat with Carol’s telegram to Dalberry in her hand she did not, as the girl had imagined, leave the building. Instead, she crossed the landing to de Silva’s flat. Taking a latch-key from her handbag she let herself in, and went at once to his sitting-room. De Silva had been out all the afternoon and did not expect to get back till after dinner—a fact of which she was presumably aware, for she did not make any attempt to find him, but walked straight to his desk, on which was a pile of letters which had come by that morning’s post.
They had already been opened and read by de Silva, and she did not scruple to go through them until she had found the one she wanted. The first three she did not even trouble to remove from their envelopes; the fourth, a fairly long typewritten effusion, she glanced through, making some notes on a slip of paper. The printed heading to the paper was that of a well-known firm of private inquiry agents.
Then, with the letter open in front of her, she sat down to compose a telegram. The wording of it seemed to cause her some trouble. Twice she rewrote it before she got it to her liking, each time putting the discarded form carefully away in her bag. The third time she was successful.
Then she went to the window, which commanded a view of the entrance to the flats, and, screened by the curtain, waited patiently until she had seen Carol emerge and enter a taxi, on her way to her dinner-party.
Only then did she move. Throwing Carol’s telegram to Dalberry carelessly on the table she made her way back to her own flat. Once there she took the crumpled telegraph forms from her bag and burned them on her sitting-room fire, watching them until they were reduced to a fine ash.
She did not trust the wire she had just written to the porter, but took it herself to the post office. On her way down in the lift she told the page to see that the fires in the flat were kept up, as she had changed her mind and would be dining in the restaurant and spending the evening at home.
She arrived at the post office just as it was closing.
“This is important,” she said to the clerk. “I hope it will go to-night.”
“It will be dispatched to-night,” answered the girl, “but if it is a small country place, it may not be delivered till the morning.”
“That will do very well,” said Lady Dalberry, with a smile that betokened complete satisfaction.
As she strolled back to the Escatorial her face bore the impress of one well pleased with the way in which her affairs were progressing.
De Silva did not get back to his flat till close on nine o’clock that evening. The first thing that met his eye was Lady Dalberry’s handkerchief, lying where she had left it beside the open letter on his writing-table.
With a queer little smile and an expressive shrug of his shoulders he pocketed it, and looked quickly round for any further traces of her visit before ringing the bell for the servant to light the fire. There were none save Carol’s unsent telegram to Dalberry, which was on the table. He picked it up, and after glancing through it, stood folding and refolding it in his slender fingers, his eyes dark with thought and a smile of satisfaction hovering on his lips. As soon as the fire was well alight he burned it.
He was writing busily when, half an hour later, he heard the click of a key in the front door, and the page showed in Captain Bond.
One glance at the man’s face was enough.
De Silva waited until the boy had left the flat, then:
“For God’s sake, pull yourself together!” he snapped. “What has happened to make you look like that?”
Bond pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and passed it over his forehead. His hands were shaking.
“The police!” he whispered. “At t
he Onyx!”
De Silva’s face grew a shade paler, but he did not flinch. “The police!” he repeated derisively. “Well, for myself, I have no objection. I hope you treated them hospitably, my little Bond, in the absence of the owner. Or had you your own reasons for disliking their company?”
Bond’s sallow face flushed a deep red.
“They’ve nothing against me,” he muttered savagely. “But you’ll laugh once too often, de Silva. They meant business, I tell you.”
“What do you mean, ‘meant business’?” exclaimed de Silva. “If our flat-footed friends found anything to interest them at the Onyx they are welcome to it. Unless you made an exhibition of yourself! The mere sight of you as you are now would be enough to damn any place!”
“All the same,” Bond insisted, “they weren’t after any shady massage establishment to-night. They barely looked at the books, but they asked some very queer questions, and they went over the place inch by inch.”
“And found nothing, my friend. I do not think they will trouble us again.”
There was a spiteful gleam in Bond’s eyes.
“They found nothing in the shop,” he said slowly. “And, if you ask me, I don’t think they expected to. Of course, what you keep in those rooms of yours upstairs I don’t know. I didn’t go with them.”
De Silva stiffened.
“They went into the flat?” he exclaimed, and Bond noted the change in his voice with dour satisfaction. “How did they get in? You fool, you did not show them the door in the office?”
“They didn’t need any help from me, I assure you. They merely brought a locksmith with them and picked the lock of the side door. They were up there a good half-hour or more.”
“So!” retorted de Silva savagely. “The police pick locks, do they, in this free country! I have an idea that somebody is going to get into trouble.”
“Nobody’s going to get into trouble, I tell you,” returned Bond, his voice shrill with mingled fear and excitement. “Don’t be a fool, de Silva. It’s serious this time. They had a warrant. I saw it.”
De Silva’s confidence seemed shaken at last.
“A warrant! In England that is serious, I believe. What happened in the flat? Did they say anything?”
“I don’t know. I was downstairs, but they left in an uncommonly good temper. What are you going to do, de Silva? If you’re clearing out you’ll take me! I’m not going to be left behind to bear the brunt this time.”
De Silva glared at him. The man was worse than useless in an emergency. His nerve had completely gone. He looked abject, and yet, under his manifest fear for his own skin, he showed a curious, vindictive satisfaction at the prospect of his employer’s downfall.
“What is the matter with you?” snapped de Silva. “Nobody is going to get hurt in this business, unless it is the bungling fool of a policeman who thought he was going to get promotion out of it. If they stripped the paper off the walls they would find nothing at the Onyx. Do you think I am a fool? What are you afraid of?”
“You and your dirty schemes,” said Bond bluntly. “Do you suppose I don’t know that there’s more in this Onyx business than meets the eye? And the fact that you’ve kept me in the dark as to what it is doesn’t mean that I won’t get roped in, just the same, if there’s a show-down. I want to know where I stand in all this.”
“You stand where you have always stood, my good Bond,” murmured de Silva softly—“behind the door, waiting to be kicked. But this time there will be no kicking. Run if you want to—I shall not try to stop you; but if you do, there may be things I could tell your friends the police that they would be glad to hear.”
“By God, I’ve a good mind to clear out and let you do your worst!” exploded Bond, and then, according to his custom, capitulated. “What are you going to do?” he repeated feebly.
“Stay where I am, of course. And if you’ve got any sense you will do the same. Get out now. If the police come here they had better not find us together. It was like you to come rushing round here at the first hint of danger. It is as well for me, my brave friend, that you are not my accomplice!”
“You are going to carry on as usual, then?”
“Of course I am going to carry on as usual. What do you think? Go back to your job, which is to run a respectable and flourishing Beauty Parlour. It is about all you are fit for.”
“Well, I’ve warned you,” said Bond, as, gathering together the tattered shreds of his dignity, he took himself off.
It was as well he went when he did. Less than fifteen minutes after the door had closed behind him Detective Inspector Shand was shown in.
He found de Silva back at his letter-writing, a cigar between his fingers and a tall glass by his side.
“Come in, inspector,” he said cordially, not attempting to disguise his surprise at this untimely visit.
He rose and pushed the cigar box across the table.
“You will have a drink?”
Shand refused both offers.
“Not at this time of night, thank you,” he said pleasantly. “We’ve taken the liberty of going over your little place, the Onyx. Had to make sure that all was ship-shape, you know. We’ve had a good deal of trouble with one or two places of that sort.”
De Silva laughed.
“You found nothing incriminating, I hope?” he said.
“Nothing except Captain Bond,” retorted Shand genially. “We’ve come up against him before, you know.”
De Silva looked startled.
“I did not know you had anything really serious against him. The truth is that he came to me after that affair at the Terpsychorean, and he was in such a bad way that I offered him the job. He seemed to have had such a bad fright that I thought it unlikely he would offend again.”
“I don’t fancy he was much to blame for the Terpsychorean affair,” said Shand thoughtfully. “It was his principal we were after, and we shall get him in the end, I’ve no doubt. No, we’ve nothing against Captain Bond at present. There are one or two questions I should like to ask you, Mr. de Silva. Just a matter of routine, you understand.”
De Silva settled himself more comfortably in his chair.
“Yes?” he murmured.
“You came to England from the Argentine, I believe? Was it your first visit to this country?”
De Silva nodded.
“Curiously enough, I had never set my foot outside America until I came here. A visit to England was one of the pleasures I had always promised myself, but the opportunity was a long time in coming. I have had to make my own way, you see, and it is not so easy, even in a rich country like the Argentine.”
“But you were lucky in the end?”
Shand’s tone was one of friendly interest.
“On the whole, yes, though I am not a rich man. I invested what money I could save in some of the smaller cinematograph companies and did astonishingly well. That, by the way, was how I came in touch with that poor fellow Conyers.”
“I was going to ask you about that. What was he doing when you first met him?”
“Playing small parts on the films. He was an eccentric dancer by profession, I believe, but I fancy he had never been very successful.”
“Did you ever meet him in the company of a man called Piper, by any chance?”
“Piper?” De Silva repeated the name slowly. He seemed to be trying to chase an illusive memory. “Was not he a man who got into trouble with the police? I never met him, but he was pointed out to me by Conyers once in a cafe. They knew each other well, I believe.”
“And how did you come to hear of his little trouble?”
Shand put the question carelessly, but he was watching the other man closely.
“Somebody told me that the police were after him before I left Buenos Aires, and later I saw in the papers that he had been arrested in England.”
“When did you leave Buenos Aires, Mr. de Silva?”
De Silva smiled.
“This is quite an inquisition,
inspector,” he said blandly. “But I am only too glad to help you if I can. To be exact, I sailed on January the fifth. I came by a French boat to Marseilles, as I wanted to have a look at Paris on the way.”
“And you arrived in England, when?”
“On February the first. Two days before I found and took this flat.”
Shand rose to his feet.
“I think that is all,” he said. “We’ve been trying to get in touch with the associates of Conyers in America, and I had hoped you might be able to help us. By the way, I suppose you never came across a fellow called Strelinski?”
De Silva had been nursing the long grey ash at the end of his cigar. Now it fell suddenly, making a little heap on the tablecloth. His face was impassive as he answered: “Strelinski? No, the name is strange to me. But you must understand that I knew very few of Conyers’s friends. Most of them, I am afraid, were not very reputable.”
Shand gave a sigh.
“Well, it’s an uphill business, this digging into a man’s past. I’ll be getting on my way. Thank you very much, Mr. de Silva.”
De Silva preceded him to the front door and opened it for him. Shand, who had been standing on the hearth, close to the writing-desk, waited until his host was across the threshold and in the little hall. Then, as he passed the desk, he dexterously stripped off the top sheet from the block of telegraph forms that lay on it and slipped it into his pocket. A couple of long strides took him across the room, and he was on de Silva’s heels by the time the Argentino reached the front door of the flat.
“And the Onyx?” queried de Silva smoothly, as he waited for Shand to pass out.
“Oh, we’re not going to worry you there,” answered the inspector with a friendly grin. “That was all in the day’s work, and, as I say, we found everything ship-shape.”