Thelma Grayson paid off her taxi outside Harley Street and gave the bell a prolonged agitated ring. When Miss Frayle opened the door Thelma Grayson stood there facing her gripping her newspaper so tightly it might have been a gun she was holding.
‘I must see Dr. Morelle —’
‘But —?’ Miss Frayle began to say, only to be pushed aside, as the visitor dashed past her. Uttering a series of protests, Miss Frayle hurried after the other, who was heading straight for Dr. Morelle’s study. She saw her burst in, and then the door slammed behind her.
When Miss Frayle opened the study door and went in she found Thelma Grayson talking vehemently to Dr. Morelle, who was leaning his tall, spare frame casually against his desk. The young woman was sitting in a chair facing him.
‘Dr. Morelle,’ Thelma Grayson was saying, as Miss Frayle closed the door behind her quietly and stood there drinking in the scene, and then she broke off. She had caught sight of a newspaper on the writing-desk. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘you’ve seen it. The police have found out he was murdered after all.’
Miss Frayle had crossed to glance at the Stop Press report which Dr. Morelle had pointed out to her earlier, referring to the new turn in the Black Moth business.
Dr. Morelle had stubbed out his cigarette with a nonchalant air.
‘I’m glad you have called,’ he said. ‘I had mentioned to Miss Frayle that I must ask her to telephone you. There were one or two matters I think you might care to know about.’
‘Never mind that,’ the other said. ‘What have you done?’ She threw the newspaper she was carrying on to the desk beside the one already there.
Dr. Morelle took a fresh Le Sphinx from the skull cigarette-box, lit it, and said smoothly, through a puff of smoke: ‘If it is on account of that newspaper report that you are in a state bordering near hysteria, you may relax.’
‘But the police know it wasn’t suicide now. It says so there. And the only person who could have made them change their mind is you. Why? I came to you for help and you said you would help me, but all you’ve done —’ Her voice broke, and then she said bitterly: ‘All you’ve done with all your promises is to give me away.’
Dr. Morelle gave the faintest shrug.
‘Inspector Hood has his duties to carry out, the same as the rest of us. Who is to blame him if he forgot to bear your feelings in mind at the time when he authorized that press release?’
She stared at him aghast.
‘You mean you told him about me?’
Dr. Morelle nodded, and Miss Frayle gave a tiny gasp. This was something he had not mentioned to her, any more than he had mentioned to her that he intended to speak to Thelma Grayson on the telephone, presumably to inform her of the good news he had for her regarding the death of Ray Mercury.
‘As a matter of fact I have,’ Dr. Morelle was saying to the white-faced, harassed-looking young woman sitting in the chair. ‘Inspector Hood of Scotland Yard expressed a wish to meet you. I said I would see if it could be arranged sometime.’
‘Oh, my God.’ At that agonized cry Miss Frayle went quickly to her side and put her arm sympathetically round the other’s shoulder. At the same time she did her best to throw a glare of protest at Dr. Morelle, who was surveying the touching scene with a sardonic expression.
‘Perhaps I should add,’ he said, examining the tip of his cigarette, ‘that I omitted to mention your name. Doubtless, however, that detail may be remedied at a more appropriate moment.’
He gave her the benefit of his wintry smile as her head came up with a jerk, her eyes wide open, gazing at him in bewilderment.
‘I — I don’t understand.’
‘I fancied I had intimated to you that you would be wiser to leave this entire matter in my hands. I can only reiterate that advice, leave all to me.’ He nodded at the newspapers on the writing-desk. ‘Ignore anything like that which you may read in the press. I can assure you your own situation is not in any way endangered. On the contrary.’ His hooded eyes flickered over Miss Frayle who was regarding him with one of her nonplussed expressions with which he was not entirely unfamiliar. ‘Perhaps you would remind me, Miss Frayle,’ he said, ‘what it was about which I was to telephone Miss Grayson this morning.’
But Miss Frayle’s eyes behind her horn-rimmed glasses only widened, while her mouth opened and closed soundlessly: ‘You mean about — about —?’
‘You could not,’ Dr. Morelle said, ‘have put it more succinctly.’
‘What did you want to tell me?’
Thelma Grayson found her voice at last, and her words were a cue for Miss Frayle to plunge into a torrent of explanation. She outlined what Dr. Morelle had told her the previous afternoon following their visit to Tracy Wright’s penthouse high above Park Lane and Hyde Park. When the spate abated, the other was on her feet, disbelief written on her face as she glanced first at Miss Frayle and then at Dr. Morelle.
‘He gave me blank cartridges?’ she kept saying slowly, to herself.
‘That’s right,’ said Miss Frayle, with a bright nod. ‘He thought you might get into trouble, you see. Wasn’t it clever of him? So although you fired at that horrible man, you didn’t hit him and you couldn’t have hurt him. Because you only had blank cartridges in the gun.’
Thelma Grayson was staring unseeingly at Dr. Morelle, her hands clenched.
‘I didn’t shoot him,’ she said slowly. ‘I couldn’t have shot him.’ Her attitude slackened. Her shoulders sagged, and her hands hung limply by her sides and she slumped back into her chair. ‘I’ve been tearing myself to pieces, I’ve almost gone mad. And all the time it was a silly game.’
And then she began to laugh, wildly. She was laughing hysterically, rocking to and fro, and Miss Frayle, with alarmed glances at Dr. Morelle, clutched her arm, trying to quieten her, but the hysterical laughter went on unabated.
Suddenly Miss Frayle felt herself thrust aside and Dr. Morelle had taken Thelma Grayson’s shoulders firmly and began speaking to her, quietly, barely raising his voice.
‘Calm yourself,’ he said. ‘You have been under great stress but all that is over. Calm yourself, and relax. Relax.’
There was a strange, mesmeric quality in his tone, his eyes were bent upon the young woman’s face, and Miss Frayle saw her eyes open and meet his. And if Miss Frayle experienced a faint jealousy perhaps at the sight of a beautiful young woman held securely by Dr. Morelle’s steel-like, yet tender hands, and whose lovely eyes were being subjected to his deeply penetrating gaze, she quickly pushed the idea out of her consciousness.
The other sagged in his grip, her laughter dying to a gurgle. She began to shake violently, and Dr. Morelle handed her over to Miss Frayle who led her gently to her chair. She sat down, her shoulders hunched. Then she burst into tears, and Miss Frayle watched her pityingly.
With a glance at Dr. Morelle she refrained from trying to comfort the other, letting her finish her outburst of pent-up emotion, now quiet and controlled. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘a cup of coffee. That’s what you need. I’ll make a nice cup of coffee.’
And Miss Frayle bustled out, returning quickly with a tray of rattling coffee-cups.
A little later and calm and smiling Thelma Grayson stepped into a taxi in Harley Street and was driven back to her flat in Charlotte Street. Her fears were at rest, her confidence in Dr. Morelle fully restored. It seemed to her that at last the nightmare in which she had moved like some automaton since that night of horror at the Black Moth was at an end. Outside the front door of her flat she found a figure that had become quite familiar to her during the last few days.
It was Phil Stone.
Chapter Twenty-One
‘Don’t you see, Thelma, if this man was down at the cottage that night, it might solve at least one problem?’ Phil paced the room of the Charlotte Street flat, while Thelma Grayson watched him tensely.
Her first thought when she had found him waiting for her was that he had seen the Stop Press report which had sent her terror-stricke
n off to Dr. Morelle. But he had made no mention of it, and she presumed that if he had bought a newspaper on the train-journey it had not contained the account of the new turn in the Ray Mercury case.
She decided not to say anything about it to him, it did not affect him and in any case he was so full of the news which had sent him racing back from Little Tiplow to London.
‘I don’t quite see what you mean?’ she said.
‘At the inquest you remember the Coroner hinted that it was a bit of a mystery where Julie got the stuff. It’s puzzled us, too. Where could she have got it? If that man was Mercury’s stooge there’s the answer.’ Phil clenched a fist, and she saw the knuckles whiten. ‘Even if he only gave her that poison, and with it the news which made her take it, then he deserves all that’s coming to him.’
‘Phil, don’t you think you should tell the police?’ She looked worried and apprehensive, she was conscious of the steely glitter in his eyes.
‘Even if it could be proved that he was hanging around the cottage at the time,’ Phil said, ‘there’s no proof that he ever went in, that he saw Julie. How could the police act, unless they’d got some really solid facts to go on? There’s only suspicion, but I’m prepared to act on suspicion alone,’ Phil said grimly. He stopped his pacing and turned to Thelma. ‘From the description, do you know him?’
‘It’s almost certainly a man called Luke Roper,’ Thelma said, her eyes thoughtful. ‘He was Ray Mercury’s right-hand man, bodyguard, always drove his car. It sounds like him, from what you say.’
‘Do you know him well? This Luke Roper?’
‘No. He didn’t show up at the club much.’
‘You haven’t got any idea where he hangs out?’
Thelma shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I’ve got to locate him.’
‘There’s someone who would be able to help,’ Thelma said. ‘Aces La Rue, he knows a lot about all those people.’
His face lit up with grim anticipation as she moved to the telephone and dialled. Aces La Rue had given her the telephone number of his Soho place when she had seen him there. And she had telephoned him to give him the news of her interview with Dr. Morelle. She could hear the continuous burr-burr at the other end, and was about to give up, believing that he was not in, when the receiver was lifted and his voice, breathless and wheezy, answered. When she said who it was he explained he had been out shopping. He expressed his delight at hearing it was she.
She came straight to the point.
‘I wondered if you knew where Luke Roper lives.’
‘Luke Roper?’ He sounded startled. ‘I’d steer clear of that crook, if I were you.’
‘Do you know where I can find him?’
‘I don’t count him among my friends,’ Aces La Rue said simply. Then he said: ‘He used to have a place not far from Marble Arch.’
‘Can you remember the address?’
‘Anderson Street, over a café named Pelotti’s. But I’m telling you, my dear —’
‘Thanks,’ Thelma said and rang off before Aces La Rue could launch into a long sermon warning her to keep away from Luke Roper. She gave the address to Phil.
‘I’m going over there right away,’ he said.
‘I’ll come, too,’ she said quickly.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You’d better keep out of this.’
‘Phil,’ she clutched his arm. ‘You won’t do anything — anything risky.’
He grinned. ‘I’ll remain cool, calm and collected.’
There was a ring at the front-door bell and Thelma gave a start. Phil thought he caught a glint of apprehension in her eyes. She went to the door and opened it.
‘Why, Miss Frayle,’ she said. ‘Come in.’
Miss Frayle came in, her eyes shining. She was hardly inside the flat, before she began to speak, but Thelma Grayson said quickly. ‘Mr. Stone’s just going, you’ve come in time to see him.’
Miss Frayle did not quite take the hint and was about to say what was on the tip of her tongue, until the other gesticulated to her to remain silent.
‘What a lovely afternoon it is,’ Miss Frayle said promptly, at the top of her voice. She saw Phil Stone who had appeared in the little hall, and smiled at him. She had not seen him since the Black Moth, when he had appeared utterly shocked and stricken. She thought he still looked somewhat ill and anxious now. Taut and edgy, she thought, as if he was about to take a vital step. She knew from what Thelma Grayson had told Dr. Morelle that the two knew each other.
‘I’m just on my way, Miss Frayle,’ Phil Stone said.
‘I’m sorry, Mr. Stone,’ Miss Frayle said automatically, but her expression was not markedly depressed. She in fact was longing for him to leave, so that she could talk to Thelma Grayson.
‘How is your Dr. Morelle?’ the young man was asking her politely.
‘My Dr. Morelle?’ Miss Frayle said with a nervous giggle. ‘He’s not mine, he belongs to no one but himself, I do assure you.’ She was going to add something to the effect that she wished he did belong to her, that he was hers, but decided not to, and blushed instead. ‘He’s very well, thank you,’ she said.
‘Please remember me to him,’ Phil Stone said politely, and Miss Frayle promised to do so. She caught a glance between him and the young woman she’d come to see, and then he was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Phil Stone picked up a taxi in Charlotte Street and drove to Marble Arch, alighting on the corner of a street behind the Odeon Cinema, to look for Anderson Street. Now that the rising excitement generated by his talk with Thelma Grayson was over, he felt cool and calm. Only the hard gleam in his eyes hinted at the cold hatred in his heart for the man he sought, and he knew that if it came to a showdown all his pent-up bitter fury would burst out in a blaze of violence.
Anderson Street was a small street dominated by a large block of flats on one side. On the other side of the street stucco-fronted, vari-coloured houses given over to apartments, and flats. There were several shops and a couple of pubs. Phil found Pelotti’s, a rather grubby-looking restaurant, which was filling up with lunch-time clients. The door at the side of the restaurant was open, and Phil went into the short hall, and straight up the stairs. They were creaking and uncarpeted, and the smell of cooking from the restaurant rose up with him in his nostrils.
On the second floor he saw a door at the end of a dim landing, and he went along to it and rang the bell. There was silence within, though he thought he heard soft music as if a radio was on, but turned low. Then he heard soft footsteps. The door opened, and he looked into the dead bits of slate that were the eyes of the man he had last seen in the big American blue car outside Hatford Coroner’s Court. This was the man that the poacher had seen hanging about Lilac Cottage on the night Julie had died. This was Luke Roper, the late Ray Mercury’s stooge and hired thug.
‘Well?’
The voice was sibilant and cold, toneless and without life, like the eyes in his pale expressionless face.
‘Luke Roper?’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘I want to talk to you,’ Phil said and he moved forward.
Something flickered in the other’s eyes. The teeth beneath the thin strip of moustache were bared for a moment, as it seemed he would shut the door, but Phil kept moving forward and his hefty shoulder pushed the door further open.
‘Okay,’ Luke Roper said, as he stood beside Phil in the sitting room of the flat. ‘If you got anything to say, get it over and beat it.’
Phil gave a look round the room, which was furnished very ordinarily, in contrast to the flashily-dressed individual before him. Some darkish wall-paper covered the walls, there were a couple of arm-chairs and a divan, and there was a bureau with the flap open in one corner. He had the impression that the other had rented the flat furnished. He gave his attention to Luke Roper.
‘You knew Julie Grayson, didn’t you?’ he said.
‘Of course I knew her,’ Luke said. ‘She was always h
anging round Ray Mercury, at the Black Moth, and I used to be around there myself sometimes.’
Phil looked at him, his jaw set, his eyes narrowed. There came the strident hoot of a taxi in the street below above the rumble of the traffic milling round Marble Arch.
‘You knew her better than that,’ he said. ‘You were at the cottage at Little Tiplow the night she died.’
Luke Roper made no reply, his expression seemed to remain unchanged. Or did it seem to freeze with malevolence and menace? His eyes in the pale face were as dead as they had been before. And then Phil caught a twitch in the hands the other held at his side. He smiled grimly to himself.
‘You were seen,’ he said. ‘You didn’t know that did you?’
‘Nobody could have seen me,’ Luke Roper said, ‘because I wasn’t there.’
Phil grinned at him. ‘You drove away in Ray Mercury’s car, just before the storm broke. After you’d left Julie Grayson. I can produce a witness to prove it, to point you out to the police.’
The other shrugged slightly, still standing there motionless, reminding Phil of some reptile, poised preparatory to striking. He said nothing.
‘You gave her the poison which killed her,’ Phil said, and now a cold fury took possession him. Suddenly some instinct cried out to him that this creature had been directly responsible for the death of the girl he loved.
He was not prepared for Luke Roper’s reaction to his words. Stark hatred glared from the pallid face, life flickered in the eyes, the thin moustache was drawn back in a snarl, and his hand shot inside his jacket. In the same moment the hand reappeared and Phil heard the snick of an opening knife-blade.
‘You better be on your way, before I cut you to ribbons.’
It was the sight of the knife that did it. With a growl of anger Phil dived, moving fast, and before Luke could slash at him with the knife, he had grabbed the other’s wrist, twisting viciously. Luke fought to throw him off. But Phil twisted the man’s arm behind his back and pressed up relentlessly as the man squirmed. He acted so swiftly that Luke Roper had been caught off his guard. Phil heard him gasp with agony.
Callers for Dr Morelle Page 15