Rogue's Holiday

by Maxwell March

  He did not actually say, “and we could have dispensed with your services, my dear sir,” but his manner implied the words as surely as if they had been spoken.

  David hardly noticed the rather childish hint. His mind was racing on to the morning headlines, to the trial, to Judy’s horror-stricken, terrified face, and he felt cold and helpless.

  Bloomer, on the other hand, was in a particularly sensitive mood.

  “Wait a minute, Inspector,” he said, in a tone which no sergeant of any police force in the world should ever employ when addressing a superior officer. “Before you go any further I think you ought to listen to me. I’ve got a very important piece of information. I’ve been turning over my old notebooks, and I’ve found something that’s going to revolutionize this case.”

  Inspector Winn turned round slowly and surveyed the ex-policeman.

  A braver but more intelligent man than Bloomer would have quailed before that glance. But Bloomer was elated quite as much as his superior and hurried on blissfully while David waited for the blow to fall.

  “Oh, I’ve found something of great interest,” said the ex-sergeant. “Something that’s going to make you sit up.”

  “Bloomer!” Winn’s voice was terrible. “You’re drunk. Get out of here before I throw you out.”

  The ex-sergeant stopped in full flight. His mouth fell slowly open, his small eyes puckered at first, to open wide afterwards in blank incredulity.

  David held his peace. He saw no point in interfering at this juncture. The sight of the old man goggling before him seemed to move Winn to further rage.

  “Get out!” he said, his voice shaking, and it occurred to David that this fury was largely due to the fact that Bloomer had presumed to address him as an equal in front of a Scotland Yard man.

  Had the ex-sergeant been strictly sober it is possible that he might have drawn back with sufficient grace at this point to mollify the local man, and all would still have been well.

  But Bloomer was far from sober, and he was also very pleased with himself. His eyes narrowed again after their first surprise, and a grim and particularly unpleasant expression settled over his stolid features.

  “All—right, sir,” he said, throwing in the courtesy form of address as an afterthought. “All—right, Inspector. Good-night to you.”

  He shuffled out of the room, his enormous carpet slippers flapping over the parquetry.

  Inspector Winn glanced sharply at David, but no glimmer of a smile showed on that young man’s expressionless face. He cleared his throat noisily.

  “These house detectives are impossible at the best of times,” he said. “That man is a disgrace to the hotel. I shall report him to the manager. But the first thing to do is to get our man. Everything’s ready. I’ve got a couple of men outside. Shall we go up at once?”

  David hesitated, but he did not speak, and the other man, noticing his diffidence, hastened to justify himself.

  “I don’t think there’s any question of there not being sufficient evidence,” he said stiffly. “After all, there’s the girl’s testimony, and the gun was found directly beneath his window. We should be doing less than our duty if we didn’t pull him in at once.”

  “Oh, quite,” said David. “Quite.”

  His mind was very far away. For the first time in his life personal considerations kept forcing themselves into matters of duty, and he felt bewildered and at sea.

  “I think we’ll question him here and then take him along to the station afterwards,” Winn continued, and, without waiting for David’s acquiescence, turned towards the door.

  Before he could reach it, however, it had been thrown open, and a person who, David guessed, must be the manager of the Empress shot into the room as though he had been precipitated from a catapult. He must have been an odd-looking individual at the best of times, but at the present moment, with his short black hair standing on end and his sallow face tinged with a greenish shade, he made an unforgettable picture.

  He was a fat man, faultlessly clothed in a dinner-jacket suit. He was quivering with apprehension and almost incapable of speech as he waved his plump hands at the two detectives rather as though he were attempting to mesmerize them.

  “I’ve just heard,” he exploded at last. “I have just heard, and I cannot have an arrest in my hotel. It is monstrous—unheard of! Terrible!—and I won’t have it. I won’t have it here. I can’t help it. I won’t argue with you,” he continued, although neither of the inspectors had said a word to him. “This is my hotel. My dear sirs, consider what it will mean to me if there is an arrest. The whole place will be empty by this time tomorrow.”

  He paused for a moment, and when they said nothing, sank down in a chair and passed an immense white handkerchief over his face.

  “It’s no use arguing. I won’t consider it,” he said. “You can talk as much as you like. What I say I mean. No arrest is possible in this hotel.”

  Inspector Winn coughed. The manager of the Empress had the ear of the chief constable. Therefore it was as well to move tactfully.

  He was still embarrassed by David’s presence, too. The young man’s stolid indifference to the little scenes he had just witnessed got on Inspector Winn’s nerves, and he had no means of finding out whether this representative of Scotland Yard was amused, bored, or silently criticizing.

  “Arrest, Mr. Populof?” he said mildly. “Aren’t you making a mistake? We’re only anxious to get this thing over. You know that. And you have a guest here, a Mr. Lionel Birch, whom we’re very anxious to interrogate. I think we’ll go upstairs and see him, if you don’t mind. Don’t be alarmed. There won’t be any noise. If by chance we do have to ask him to accompany us, you can rely on our discretion. None of your other guests need ever know anything has taken place.”

  The manager mopped his forehead, sighed, groaned, and exhibited every sign of giving way completely to his emotions.

  “If I could only rely on that,” he said.

  “But of course you can.” Inspector Winn was in his element. “We’ll go straight upstairs now, very quietly. No one need ever know anything about it. We shan’t be a moment. But it’s very important that we should have a word with Mr. Birch at once. After all, Mr. Populof, we want this thing cleared up at once, don’t we?”

  “Good heavens, yes. The sooner the better. You gentlemen don’t understand. This means ruin for me—ruin. What will my regular patrons say of me if I have a murderer in my hotel? Still, Inspector, you understand there must be no arrest? If you want to lock the man up, you must take him away and do it somewhere else.”

  The complete illogicality of this announcement did not seem to occur to any of the three men, or, at any rate, nobody smiled. David was much too absorbed in his own thoughts to pay much attention to the hysterical manager, Inspector Winn was not blessed with much sense of humour, while Mr. Populof evidently had none at all.

  Inspector Winn turned to David.

  “I think we’ll go up, Blest,” he said. “Shall we?”

  “I will come with you,” Mr. Populof insisted.

  Winn put his foot down. “I think not, sir,” he said. “This is a confidential police matter. Perhaps you’ll wait for us down here?”

  After a certain amount of persuasion Mr. Populof consented to remain downstairs and for the third time that evening David walked up the broad staircase of the Empress Hotel and climbed to the second floor.

  As they reached the second floor and walked down the broad corridor, two plainclothes men following them at a discreet distance, the full force of the terrible situation in which he found himself burst into David’s consciousness. He loved Judy: the fact stood out clearly in his mind. His future happiness was bound up in her. And yet here he was walking down a hotel corridor at four o’clock to arrest her father on a charge of murder.

  There were beads of sweat upon his forehead when he paused outside room number fifty. With a smile of grim satisfaction upon his face Inspector Winn raised his fist and tap
ped upon the door.

  The four men waited. They knew there was no other exit from the room save the window, and from that there was a thirty-foot drop into the police-lined street below.

  There was no reply to the first tap, and the inspector knocked again, more loudly this time. David felt his own heart beating ridiculously loudly. It was a nerve-racking situation.

  Still there was no reply. Inspector Winn frowned.

  “We can’t make a noise. Better go in.”

  He drew a pass key from his pocket and fitted it into the lock.

  “Carefully,” he whispered. “He may have a second gun.”

  The door opened softly, and Winn and David, followed by the plainclothes men, stepped swiftly inside. The room was in darkness, and as David stretched out his hand and switched on the light a startled exclamation escaped the local man.

  David stared round him in bewilderment. The room presented an extraordinary scene. Not only was it deserted—so much was evident at a first glance—but it was completely ransacked. Bedclothes strewed the floor. Every drawer lay out upon its side. The wardrobe door hung crazily open. The mattress had been displaced, revealing the wire springs beneath. The windows were wide open, and the curtains swung lazily in the draught.

  But of Lionel Birch or any of his belongings there was no trace whatever.

  Inspector Winn turned to David. His face was very pale, and his small eyes were darker than usual with mingled disappointment and bewilderment.

  “What happened?” he said. “He made a quick getaway, didn’t he?”

  David said nothing. His blue eyes were characteristically lazy-looking, and the thought which ran obstinately through his mind, and which had worried him since he had first set eyes upon the scene, was that when one packs in a great hurry one hardly wastes a great deal of precious time in completely dismantling one’s bed and hurling the blankets and linen into every conceivable corner of the room.

  The more he thought about it the more convinced he was that there was something quite incomprehensible and extraordinary about Judy Wellington’s father’s flight from justice.

  Inspector Winn cut into his thoughts.

  “Lost him,” he said, his voice unsteady and uncontrollable with fury. “Slipped through our very fingers. But we’ll get him. We’ll get him if we have to comb the whole of England. This proves he’s our man, anyway, and I’ll pull him in. I’ll pull him in if it’s the last thing I do.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  The Terrace Sun Trap

  “MY DEAR CHILD, you don’t look at all well this morning. Come and sit by me and watch the sea. It’s perfectly beautiful here: sunny and yet cool.”

  Marguerite Ferney, in a white cotton gown, miraculously cut, and trimmed with a scarlet and white spotted kerchief enhancing the dazzling fairness of her skin and hair, came running down a little flight of stone steps built into the rock itself and hurried to meet Judy as she walked along the lower promenade.

  Judy looked pale and wan. It was far too hot, even for an invalid, to stick to the eternal squirrel coat, and she had replaced it with a thick white one over her cotton frock.

  Judy had been forced out for a little walk. The atmosphere of the hotel was stifling in spite of every modern device to keep it cool. But out here it seemed almost worse.

  Marguerite Ferney went on talking, and her cool loveliness was curiously attractive.

  “Look,” she said. “Doesn’t that fascinate you? It’s the most comfortable place in the world to sit.”

  Judy smiled at her shyly, and, glancing over her shoulder, looked up at the little oasis in the sunlight which the other woman indicated.

  This was a tiny grass-covered ledge, a natural beauty which the gardeners of the hotel had been quick to enhance. It was situated some twenty feet below the main terrace and was really nothing more than a little pocket in the cliff, halfway between the hotel terrace and the second promenade.

  A collection of rock plants had been persuaded to grow all round it, and there was a little plot of grass in the middle which was occupied at the moment by two extremely comfortable-looking deck chairs, a pile of magazines, and an immense gaily-coloured umbrella which cast a comfortable shadow in the midst of the blazing sunlight.

  It certainly did look extraordinarily inviting. Judy hesitated and was lost. Marguerite Ferney was a person who was used to getting her own way.

  “Come along,” she said. “Come along and sit down.”

  Judy found herself coaxed up into the little oasis beneath the wall of the hotel garden.

  “I found this place yesterday,” Miss Ferney remarked, helping her into a chair, “and as soon as I saw it I said to myself, ‘That’s the place for me to sit.’ So I interviewed the manager and had it all fixed up. Very sensible of me, don’t you think?”

  Judy regarded this brilliant creature with a certain amount of awe. She had been a little put off at their first meeting on the evening before, but Marguerite Ferney’s personality was of the effervescent and dangerous type which inspires confidence very easily. Judy found her extraordinarily easy to talk to and began to like her very much.

  “Yes, it’s beautiful,” she said, settling down in the depths of her cushioned chair and looking out over the sparkling water where a fleet of tiny fishing boats gleamed like white butterflies in the sun. “It was awfully nice of you to ask me to come up here, Miss Ferney.”

  “My dear child, of course not. I was dying for somebody to talk to, and you looked nearly as lonely as I was. Tell me, what’s happened to your handsome young cousin? You did tell me he was a cousin, didn’t you? The one I met last night.”

  In spite of herself Judy flushed.

  “No, he’s no relation,” she said.

  “Oh dear.” Miss Ferney looked contrite. “I do hope I didn’t disturb a flirtation. But he’s extraordinarily handsome, my dear. I quite lost my heart to him.”

  Judy’s discomfort increased. She had been trying not to think too much of David and had found it extremely difficult. And, try as she would, she could not stifle the little pain at her heart whenever she thought of him.

  Marguerite Ferney rattled on.

  “Tell me, my dear,” she said, “what are you doing all alone down here? You are quite alone, aren’t you? I mean except for the extremely handsome young man.”

  Judy hesitated. She was usually the most discreet of mortals, but, although Marguerite Ferney irritated her intensely when she spoke of David, she did seem extraordinarily guileless, and it certainly had been kind of her to ask her up to this delightful little private terrace.

  “Oh no,” she said. “My guardian’s staying here, Sir Leo Thyn.”

  “Oh, really? You’re staying for your health, I suppose?” The other woman’s eyes were fixed on Judy’s face, and the girl felt that she had penetrated her secret. She reddened under her make-up.

  “Yes,” she said deliberately. “I’ve never been very well.”

  “A permanent invalid? Oh, my dear child, how tragic! You must promise to come and sit up here whenever you feel like it. I shall be delighted to have you, really I shall. And now tell me all about yourself.”

  Judy began to wish more and more that she had never accepted Miss Ferney’s invitation in the first place, yet in spite of herself she could not help being attracted to the other woman. She watched her thoughtfully under half-closed lids.

  Marguerite Ferney seemed completely unaware of her scrutiny, and the expression upon her face was guileless and friendly. When she went on to speak it was about trivial matters, and Judy reproached herself for being unduly suspicious.

  Marguerite Ferney was an adept at making people talk, and she practised her wiles on Judy with a skill which made the girl’s ingenuous attempts at reticence seem absurd.

  When her fears and suspicions were completely allayed and she was thinking of nothing save the charm of her new friend, Miss Ferney played her trump card.

  “Quite a lot of excitement in the town last night,” she sai
d. “I do hope it won’t be bad for all these poor people who are trying to make a living out of the holiday visitors. And yet one never knows. People are so morbid, it may even draw crowds to the place. One never can tell. You’ve read about it, of course?”

  She turned over the pages of a newspaper which lay upon her knee and presently handed it to the girl. The first thing Judy saw staring up at her from the page was a police photograph of the man whom she imagined she was going to marry, and underneath, in bold type:

  “Johnny Deane, alias ‘The Major,’ was found shot in a small Westbourne hotel at a late hour last night.”

  The paper, an early copy of the Evening Telegram, slipped through her fingers, and Marguerite Ferney, who had been watching her carefully, bent forward.

  “My dear child,” she said, “what is it? Did you know him? Oh, you poor little thing, you must tell me all about it. I insist. Perhaps there’s something I can do to help.”

  Judy picked up the paper again and forced herself to read the headline. Then a strangled cry escaped her as another announcement caught her eye.

  “The police are particularly anxious to interview a man called Lionel Birch, who was staying at the Empress Hotel at the time of the crime. He left soon afterwards, but so far his whereabouts has not been ascertained.”

  “Miss Wellington, you’re as white as a sheet. You look as though you’re going to faint. Tell me all about this. I have a lot of influence in all sorts of directions. Perhaps I can help you. Won’t you confide in me, my dear?”

  The words died upon her lips. A shadow had fallen across her lap, and, looking up, she became aware of a tall, thin old man in a grey alpaca suit, who stood at the top of the steps, his eyes bent searchingly upon her.

  Saxon Marsh was not an attractive-looking person at the best of times, and to look up suddenly and find him peering at one might well have made any ordinary woman quail; but Marguerite Ferney was far from being ordinary.

  “Yes?” she said inquiringly in her softest tones.

  Saxon Marsh continued to stare at her for some moments before he spoke. Then he said unexpectedly: