The door opened noiselessly, and four men came in. They were in plain
clothes, and one carried a large box.
“Evening,” said the first. “I am Chief Inspector Pointer from New
Scotland Yard. These are detectives Watts, Miller and Lester. What's
wrong?”
“I 'phoned,” a tall young man answered crisply. “I am the manager of
the hotel. This is Mr. Beale, an American gentleman to whom this room
was let a couple of hours ago. It really belongs to a young fellow who
is away for the week-end, but as there was no other room available we
assigned it to this gentleman for the one night. Mr. Beale has just
told me that there is something wrong about the wardrobe you see
there. Kindly investigate that large knot-hole in the back for
yourself, Inspector.”
The Chief Inspector peered at the hole indicated, ran a finger lightly
around it, and inserted it as gently as a mother feeling her baby's
tooth. His face showed no change of expression, but, stepping back, he
looked the piece of furniture over with the meticulous care of a
would-be purchaser hoping to find a flaw, before he got on a chair and
examined the top.
“Miller, take your coat off and be doing something outside. See that
no one lingers, and notice if any of the doors along the corridor are
open.”
“Yes, sir.” The man vanished.
“The wardrobe evidently stood back against the wall. I take it that it
hasn't been tampered with in any way before you rang us up, Mr.
Manager?”
“Not by me. This gentleman called me in because he fancied that there
was something wrong.”
The Chief Inspector looked Mr. Beale over almost as carefully as he
had the wardrobe. He did not strike the police officer as the kind of
man to be occupying just such an apartment, for the room looked
simple, and Mr. Beale did not,—not in the least. “Did you do anything
to it, sir?”
The well-dressed, well-manicured, middle-aged man folded his hands
over his ample front, pursed up a cruel mouth, and shook his head.
“No, Chief, not beyond moving it out and feeling around through that
gaping hole same as yourself.” His voice wrapped the Stars and Stripes
around him.
“I'd be obliged, gentlemen, if you will remain quite still for a few
minutes. Lester, I want the usual flashlight photos.”
“Yes, sir,” and the photographer got to work. The exposures were
quickly made.
“Now, then, help Watts to lift the top off, and we'll get the wardrobe
on its side. Gently does it.”
“Ah-h-h!” came from the two men watching, and the manager made an
impulsive forward movement.
“Stand back, sir!” The Chief Inspector's voice was sharp. “Now,
another flashlight, Lester.”
When this was done, the Chief Inspector unobtrusively picked up a wax
vesta which had tumbled out from the wardrobe while the huddled figure
inside was lifted on to the bed.
“Good God!” The manager stared at the placid young face bent stiffly
to one side: “it's the young fellow himself—Eames—who took this room
hardly a week ago. Why, I had a telephone message from him at five
o'clock saying that he was going out of town for the week-end.”
“And now it's nine-thirty. Humph! You can positively identify him?”
“Positively.”
The Chief Inspector took a letter which one of his men had just found
in the dead man's coat pocket. He examined it closely before holding
it out to the manager. “It's for you, sir.”
The manager started back, and turned a little pale. He did not seem to
care for the task of opening it, but after a moment's hesitation he
ripped the envelope and read in a low voice:
“Enterprise Hotel,
Aug. 4th.
Sir,
Enclosed please find £10 to pay for my bill, and the cheapest
funeral possible. It may save time and trouble to know that I have
just taken an overdose of morphia, after 'phoning to you to let my
room stay as it is until Monday. I am now about to fasten myself
into my temporary coffin. I have nothing left to live for. I only
regret on your behalf that chance has made your hotel my
stepping-off plank. For both our sakes do your best to keep the
matter quiet.
Faithfully yours,
Reginald Eames.”
“Suicide!” The manager's voice sounded almost triumphant.
Mr. Beale said nothing. With his hands in his pockets he stood staring
down at the quiet figure.
“You recognise him too, sir?” Pointer appeared to have eyes in the
back of his head, for he stood with his face turned away from the
American, still scrutinising the dead man's letter.
Mr. Beale's small, piercing eyes, which gleamed like mica behind the
circles of his horn pince-nez, went dull.
“No, Chief, no. I'm a stranger to this wicked little village of yours.
I was just wondering what it is that makes young men throw away their
lives so easily for the first pretty face that comes along. I suppose
there'll be a girl at the bottom of this case, too.” He turned away.
“Any objection to a cigar all round?”
“Not unless they're lit,” and the Chief Inspector accepted one, too.
The manager came out of his abstraction. He had been wondering, among
other things, how to give the news of the occurrence to the Press in
its least interesting form. “Perhaps you could leave taking him away
till one o'clock?”
“Very good, sir. You'll find that we try to be as little in the way as
possible. Did he have anything in your safe?”
“No, nothing.”
“Now, gentlemen, if you'll both step into another room, I'll join you
later to hear any further particulars you can give me. First, sir,
kindly point out anything that is yours.”
Mr. Beale took up his top-coat and umbrella, while the manager picked
up a bag. Watts looked all three over very carefully inside and out,
his superior lending a casual hand.
When the police officers were alone they rapidly finished the
undressing of the young man. He seemed barely thirty.
“Done no manual work,” Watts laid a hand down gently, “or—I'm not so
sure. But at any rate not a dandy. No manicuring.”
“Has been in the habit of wearing a ring for years, judging by that
oval mark, very likely a signet ring. Found one in his pockets?” But
nothing was found in the young man's pockets except a handkerchief
marked R.E., a fountain pen, a pencil—at whose point the
Superintendent gazed meditatively—the keys of the wardrobe and the
chest of drawers, and a watch and chain.
The Chief Inspector held the inside pocket of the waistcoat to the
light.
“Look at that shiny place. He's been in the habit of carrying a
note-book there.”
“Very poor watch, and most expensive chain,” Watts remarked
significantly, “wonder if he's some kind of a hotel-rat?”
“His clothes aren't flashy,” Pointer pointed out, “good material and
cut, though well-worn. Ah, here's the doctor!”
The surgeon took but a few minutes before he straightened the sheet
again. “Dead not less than four hours—and not more than five.” He put
his thermometer away.
“Died between four-thirty and five-thirty,” wrote the police officers.
“Cause of death, doctor?”
“Morphia, as far as I can judge at present, and he didn't make the
mistake of taking too little. Everything points to a tremendous dose.
He drank it probably; so far I've seen no punctures. Autopsy will tell
more on Monday,” and the Doctor bustled off.
The two detectives turned to the wardrobe.
“Those back panels have been screwed on very badly, sir, and as for
this little brass bolt on the door inside—it's a shocking sight.”
Watts' father was a cabinetmaker and he spoke as an expert.
“Just so. The odd thing is that both seem done by the same bungler!”
Pointer was looking carefully at the two specimens of handicraft. “Now
Mr. Eames is obviously to be held responsible for the addition of the
bolt which was to serve instead of locking the door on the inside, but
he could hardly have been interested in the back panels, one would
think.”
It was quite half an hour later, when, leaving his subordinate at
work, the Chief Inspector stepped out into the little corridor.
Miller rose to his feet and pointed at the next door but one to the
room the Chief Inspector had just left. “That door was ajar, sir, when
I came out. It's stayed shut since.”
Pointer glanced at it. “Number eleven,” he registered to himself. The
room he had just left was number fourteen. There was no number
thirteen in the hotel.
“The manager said if you'd go down to the lounge, and knock on the
brown door to the right of the stairs, sir, he and the other gent.
would be expecting you.” Miller set to work again, extracting tacks
from the carpet and replacing them carefully.
Pointer seemed to have a good deal of difficulty in finding his way.
He roamed around the service-stairs which passed not far from number
fourteen, and even opened a door on the ground floor leading from them
into the street. Here a couple of muddy foot-prints kept him busy for
some minutes. He measured and traced them before he closed the door
noiselessly, and experimented with its locks and bolts. Only then did
he drift by a series of détours into the lounge and the manager's
private suite.
The manager poured out a whisky and soda, which the Chief Inspector
left untouched.
“I'm afraid I must take each of your depositions separately,
gentlemen. I'll take your statement first, sir, as I understand it was
you who called the manager to No. 14.” Pointer got out his book and
rapidly entered the date, August 4th—ten-thirty p.m.—Enterprise Hotel,
while the manager left to look up his registers.
“My name, Chief, is Augustus P. Beale. I'm a sub-editor of the _New
York Universe_.” The police officer inclined his head as though in
homage to the mighty journal's name.
“Came over on the _Campania_ for a year's holiday last month,—by the
way, here's my passport, but don't tell me that photo's a good one. We
landed July 20th. I've been in Paris most of the time since with some
friends, got lonely when they left, and came to London. Arrived this
morning by the boat train—Calais-Dover—and found everything full.
Worked my way around to the Enterprise, and was told that here, too,
every room was taken. Threw myself upon the manager's breast with my
credentials in both hands, and begged him to take pity on my grey
hairs and save me from a bench in the park. He thought awhile, and,
taking me by the hand, with a heavenly smile, led me to a room,
explained that it really belonged to a man who was spending the
week-end in the country, but that if I would let it go at that for one
night he would fix me up something better in the morning. I accepted
with tears of gratitude, and after dinner in their restaurant settled
myself down before a gas-fire with a cup of coffee. It was pouring, as
you know, and I sat warming my toes and putting down my expenses. A
shilling rolled under the wardrobe and I fished for it with my
umbrella. Couldn't get it, then I tried to move the wardrobe out. Its
weight surprised me. However, I got it away from the wall at last and
recovered my shilling. As I straightened up, the light from the little
electric torch I was using fell full into the knot-hole, and I caught
a glimpse of what certainly looked like a piece of human skin,—bit of
a cheek. I touched it. There's only one thing in the world that feels
like that, and that's a dead body. That was enough for me. I went off
post-haste for the manager, found him by good luck just outside in the
corridor, and brought him back. He sent for you. That's all.”
“Thank you, sir.” The Chief Inspector handed back the passport. “May I
ask the names of your friends in Paris, though I don't suppose for a
moment that there'll be any need to use the addresses.”
“I only stayed part of the time at private houses. Part of the time I
put up at the Crillon. I'm afraid I don't just see my way to giving
you my friends' names. You ask about me at the Embassy, Chief: they'll
set your mind at rest.”
“Thank you, sir, but my mind isn't uneasy. All these questions are
only part of the routine.” The Chief Inspector smiled that cheery
smile of his which the London underworld dreaded more than any frown.
“And now, this afternoon—let me see, where did you say you were?”
“The boat didn't get in till about five. The rest of the time till I
arrived here about half-past six I spent in taxis driving from hotel
to hotel. Anything else, Chief?”
The Chief Inspector assured him that there was nothing else, and
suggested that he might like to try one of the very comfortable chairs
in the lounge, and that should he meet the manager would he mind
asking him to step into his own sitting-room again.
The manager's story was brevity itself. He told of Beale's arrival
“about half-past six,” his appeal to him to get him some sort of a
shelter on such a night. “I believe he offered to share the dog's
kennel provided the beast didn't bite. Incidentally, he told me who he
was. Of course, I wanted to do my best for such a client, and thought
of the only vacant room in the house,—No. 14. It was fresh in my mind,
for I had been talking to the booking clerk when the 'phone came
through saying that Mr. Eames would be away over the week-end. Of
course as a rule we shouldn't dream of letting anyone else occupy a
room under such circumstances, but——”
“One moment: who answered the 'phone?”
“The booking-clerk.”
“Thank you, sir. Well, so you took Mr. Beale to No. 14. Did you have
the room freshly done up for him—I mean, fresh towels and so on?”
“Of course.”
“And then?”
“I saw him at dinner in our restaurant, and said a word to the head
waiter, then I saw no more of him till he stopped me in the corridor
and told me that there was a dead man in his wardrobe.”
“Could you repeat his exact words?”
“‘Excuse me, Mr. Manager, but do you know that someone's left a dead
man in the wardrobe of that room you let me have?’”
“How did he look? Excited? Frightened?”
The manager thought a moment. “Excited, I should say, and trying not
to show it.”
“And now you, sir, where were you this afternoon?”
The manager sat up.
“But look here, Inspector,—why, good God,—I thought it was as clear a
case of suicide——” The manager's eyes were almost out of his head.
“Bless you, sir, ten to one this is all only a matter of form. We
always do it. Police routine, you know.”
“I see. Yes, I see.” But obviously it took the manager some effort to
focus his mental gaze. “Well, I was all over the place.” He named his
various movements.
The Chief Inspector's pen flew over the paper.
“That's all, thank you, sir. Will you send me the booking-clerk—unless
I'm taking up this room?”
The manager's one desire was that the Chief Inspector should stay in
seclusion. Once let a suspicion get about in the hotel that the police
were turned loose in it—he thought of them as he might have of the
elements of fire or water—and gone would be the hum and stir as of a
prosperous hive which rose from all around them.
The story told by the booking-clerk was equally simple.
“Eight days ago—on July twenty-fifth—about noon, a young man carrying
a bag had come into the hotel and asked for a single room on the first
floor facing the front. None of these were free for the moment. He had
refused to take another, had deposited ten shillings, and asked them
to keep him the first one that should be free, giving his name as
Reginald Eames. He was back about six o'clock. Meanwhile one had
fallen vacant—number fourteen. He took it without looking at it, and
registered.”
“All your rooms are the same price, I believe?”
“Yes, all. Here's his entry.”
The Chief Inspector read, “Reginald Eames. Dentist. Manchester.” He
compared the writing carefully with the letter found on the dead man.
“I shall want to have that signature photographed,” was his only
comment. “Well?”
“Well, that's all. I saw him about a bit. He spent all his time in the
lounge. This morning I met him at lunch in the restaurant. Seems funny
that a man should bother with a meal a few hours before he intends to
chuck the whole thing.”
The Chief Inspector was not interested in philosophic abstractions.
“When did he lunch?”
“I entered at half-past one, just as he was leaving. That's everything
I know about the chap except that someone 'phoned up at five o'clock
to say that Mr. Eames, of room number fourteen, wished to let us know
that he wouldn't be back till Monday morning, as he was spending the
week-end in the country with a friend.”
“Are you sure of the time?”
The clerk shook his head. “Only there or thereabouts. It wasn't much
past, for the five o'clock post hadn't come in, nor much before, for I
come on duty at five after my tea, and I had just got back.”
“The manager was talking to you when the message came, I understand?”
“Was he? Possibly. I don't remember.”
“You think he wasn't?”
“I _thought_ he came up after the post got in. But, of course, I may
be wrong. One day's so like another.”
“But I understand that he, too, heard the 'phone?”
“He might have done that—the 'phone is to one side of the desk—but I
didn't see him.”
“Did Mr. Eames give any reason as to why he was determined to have one
of the first floor rooms looking into the street?”
“None whatever.”
“Were the rooms you offered him instead as good?”
“One was better.”
“Has he ever stayed in the hotel before?”
“No.”
“Sure?”
“Quite. I came here when the hotel opened.”
“Isn't there a balcony running all along your front rooms on the first
floor, and also along the rooms of the Marvel Hotel next door?”
“Yes. Both hotels belong to the same management.”
The Chief Inspector seemed plunged in thought for a moment. “By the
way, before I forget it, from which direction did the manager come
when he spoke to you after Eames' 'phone had been taken? I want to get
the whole scene clear in my mind.”
“From the direction of the stairs.”
“And now about the voice over the 'phone—it wasn't Eames himself, you
think?”
“Sure it wasn't. This sounded like an old chap with a cold in his
head.”
“Wheezy?”
“More than that. Funniest voice—sort of muffled—I should know it again
anywhere.”
“A disguised voice,” wrote the Chief Inspector.
“Had Eames any friends?”
“Never saw him speak to a soul.”
“Did any letters come for him?”
“Not a card.”
“How would you say that, generally speaking, he spent his time in the
hotel?”
“Smoking cigarettes in the lounge. Of course we've had rotten weather,
but I don't think Mr. Eames was out of the house for more than ten
minutes at a stretch.”
“Did he go out often?”
“Always after each meal. Acted as though he intended to live to be a
hundred. And to think that all the time he meant to commit suicide!
Why, he might have had any kind of a bust-up.” The booking-clerk
evidently considered that Eames had wasted a rare chance.
“Now about Mr. Beale's arrival?”
But there the booking-clerk could tell the Chief Inspector nothing
fresh.
“And now I want to know what luggage, however small, left the hotel
after mid-day to-day. I'm afraid I'll have to have the day-porter
routed out, too.”
“I can tell you from the books that there were no departures to-day
after twelve o'clock. As a matter of fact, not a bag left the hotel
after a quarter-past eleven. It's one of our strictest rules that
nothing leaves a room without first 'phoning down to the clerk to find
out if it's all O.K.”
“But what about the people in the hotel taking out their bags
themselves?”
“Oh, that,—of course—but not this afternoon.” The clerk thought back,
“You see it's a small hotel, and I'm paid to keep my eyes open. Nobody
took out any bag bigger than a woman's wrist-bag after one o'clock.
There's no business doing of a Saturday afternoon. The day-porter's
gone home and won't be visible till Monday.”
“What about when you're off duty, Mr. Page?”
“The manager relieves me for two hours at noon, from one to three, but
as the dining-room opens out of the hall, and my table is just by the
glass door, I'm as good as in the hall. At seven o'clock the
hall-porter takes my place till seven-thirty. But, as I say, I've my
eyes on the hall all the time, and if there's any crush I'm out in two
twos.”
The clerk yawned dismally, and Pointer, with a laugh, let him go,
after having him write down the names of any of the occupants of the
five balcony rooms which were not known to the management from other
visits. There were only two. Numbers eleven and twelve; and of these,
number eleven was “expecting to leave” daily.
“Now, who do I see about the service-stairs—who is supposed to keep an
eye on them?”
“The housekeeper. She's still up; I'll send her to you.”
The housekeeper assured him that at noon by Saturday the service-door
just beyond the manager's suite was duly locked and bolted. After that
hour it could only be used with her consent and approval. The lower
door in the basement—the delivery door proper—was, of course, another
matter. The key of the upper door hung in the maids' sitting-room just
opposite,—a small room used especially by the maid who waited on the
manager.
“That door leads to the maids' sitting-room and to the service-stairs,
doesn't it?”
The Chief Inspector pointed to a door opening out of the manager's
little lobby. He opened it as he spoke—not for the first time that
night.
The housekeeper looked surprised. “Bless me, sir, it doesn't take you
police gentlemen long to find your way about.”
“And that is the door leading into the street, eh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It's not locked now.”
“Oh, yes, it is, sir.” She laid a confident hand on it to turn in
bewilderment as it opened easily.
“Why—why—someone must have undone it!”
“Just so,” agreed Pointer dryly. “And the key?”
She opened a door facing the street entrance, and switched on the
light. “There it is, hanging where I put it at twelve o'clock.”
Pointer raised a weary eyebrow, but he said nothing, and made his way
to the lounge, where, after asking both the manager and Mr. Beale to
hold themselves in readiness for any possible further questions
to-morrow morning, he joined Watts upstairs and spent a strenuous hour
with him.
“No key to fit his trunk—no sign of the bag which the booking-clerk
and porter saw him carry upstairs,—no sign of a ring,—no scrap of
paper nor any mark of identity beyond his signatures,—humph!”
The Chief Inspector dusted his knees carefully and went to the
mantelpiece. “Here's a box of wax vestas right enough, the same kind
as the vesta I picked up in the wardrobe, but that one was still warm
and soft. Burnt down to the last end and dropped burning into the
wardrobe when it scorched someone's fingers—whose, Watts?”
Watts shook his head.
“—Not more than half-an-hour before we came into the room, so Eames
couldn't have done it, for more reasons than one.”
“I saw you try the electric torch in that American gent.'s bag, sir,”
Watts threw in.
“Just so. It was out of order. He didn't say a word about that in his
evidence downstairs. You noticed those marks on the top of the
wardrobe, where someone had evidently passed a stiff brush over it,
presumably to do away with any finger marks or streaks?”
“I did, sir. And wasn't his—I mean Mr. Beale's—clothes-brush in a
fearful state. He did look put out when you picked it up first thing.”
The Chief Inspector nodded with a grim smile. “Aye, he did. He might
have thought it less of a give-away if he'd known that all along he
had a fine smear of dust on the under part of his sleeve. A smear that
could only have been got up there. The manager's coat was clean,
though that proves little. I hope you noticed the washstand before the
doctor washed his hands?”
Watts was an honest young fellow, and he flushed by way of answer.
“The towel was damp, so was the soap. So was the inside of the basin.
The jug was half empty, but there wasn't a drop of water in the pail.
Whatever water had been used had been flung out of the window. It's
been pouring so hard all day that a bit more or less would never be
noticed. But the fact is odd. Why should anyone mind pouring the basin
into the pail?”
“The water was too black after that wardrobe top,” laughed Watts. The
Chief Inspector was popular with his men, and Watts was, moreover, a
distant connection.
“Then that chest of drawers. You know the feeling of using a key after
a pass-key?”
“As though the lock were stuck, sir?”
“Just so. I turned the key very slowly, and each drawer had been last
opened with a pass-key, or rather locked with one. And that smell of
tobacco when we opened them—same smell as Mr. Beale's cigars. And that
dusting of cigar ash on one of the ties. I shouldn't wonder if this is
going to turn into a very funny case, Watts. I shouldn't wonder at
all.”
Watts' eyes brightened. A “funny case” from the point of view of the
police often leads to promotion, and though Pointer was the youngest
Chief Inspector at the Yard, Watts believed he could unravel any
tangle. Pointer lived in Bayswater. He liked its open squares and
clearer air. He shared three rooms there with a friend, James
O'Connor, now a bookbinder, but during the War a very successful
member of the Secret Service. Talkative, gossipy, and secretive was
the Celt. Only a few had any idea of the hard core of blue steel that
lay beneath his apparent easy-going cheeriness. Pointer was one of
these few. He and O'Connor had worked once together, the one openly
representing the law, the other secretly endangering his life every
moment of the day while tracking down a German-American-Irish plot.
O'Connor never referred to those days, though, had his means
permitted, he would have liked to continue his hazardous work; but
with peace he had to turn his attention to making a livelihood, and
being single-minded in all his doings, he refused absolutely to be
drawn into any of his friend's problems except as the merest onlooker.
It always gave the Chief Inspector genuine pleasure to step from the
little lobby into the huge living-room which the two men used in
common. He saw richer rooms often, but never one which suited him so
well, with its ivory walls and paint, kept up to the mark by his own
neat brush, the thick, short, draw-curtains of apple-green silk to the
four windows, the chair covers of a Persian pattern—green leaves
rioting over a cream ground, with here and there a pomegranate or a
blue bird—book cases in quiet walnut stood against the walls,
Pointer's large writing desk, and O'Connor's equally huge table,
filled the corners by the windows. In one open fireplace logs were
heaped, the other was kept free for burning papers. The soft
brightness of his home was like a friendly hand clasp to the weary
police officer after the rain outside.
O'Connor smiled up at him and pointed to the table.
“Mrs. Able is thirsting for your blood. I told her to leave the things
the last time she brought them in. I couldn't face her again.” He
turned out an electric hot-plate as he spoke.
A vegetable soup, a dish of Tatar _bitokes_—savoury balls of beefsteak
and marrow and seasonings pounded to perfection and browned to a turn,
a well-made potato salad, some crisp rolls, and a glass of light wine
made Pointer ready for another stretch of work if need be.
When the meal was cleared away by his landlady, who ruled the two men
with her cooking, he filled his pipe from a beautiful covered jar of
modern Japanese enamel where gold fish glittered among green waves.
Jim's tobacco lived in a dull blue pot at the other end, and in the
middle stood the room's one useless ornament, a carved Chinese
ball-puzzle, fine as a birch leaf and showing ball within ball in
tantalising glimpses of colour. It typified his calling to the
policeman. He picked it up again and turned it gently to and fro.
“Yes,” he said ruminatingly, “get hold of your key and you'll open up
all right. But _how_ to get hold of your key——”
“I thought the Meredith case was practically over,” murmured O'Connor
through clouds of smoke.
“Finished at eight. I've another case on now, and rather a stiff one,
or all signs belie it. It's a hotel case, and you know how I feel
about them.”
“Still, old chap, you did very well with that robbery down at
Ramsgate. It gave you your leg-up.”
There was nothing Pointer enjoyed more than talking his cases over
with his friend, whose discretion was as much to be trusted as his
own. Not that he often got an opinion out of the Irishman, but the
mere reciting aloud of the various phases of a problem in itself
helped to clear his mind.
“They are the very devil all the same. You never know where you are.
Take a private house—and the servants, the furniture, the rooms, the
very walls can give you points, but a hotel! How can you follow up a
hundred or so possible criminals? Personally, if I ever go in for a
murder I should never dream of choosing any other place.”
“A murder case, eh?”
“Did I say so? Well, see what you think. This is how things stand at
present.”
He told of his call to the Enterprise and the results of the inquiry
so far.
“Why don't you think it's a suicide, what's wrong with that letter?”
Jim handed it back. “You say the writing is the same as on the
register.”
“By the same hand you'd think, but this letter's been written with an
ordinary pen, same nib and ink as is supplied in the hotel bedroom,
yet Eames had a filled fountain-pen in his pocket. He signed the
register with it, why didn't he use it to write this letter with? It
wasn't as if he had been trying to disguise his handwriting. Then the
way he was huddled into the wardrobe looked as if his feet had been
shoved in first and the rest of his body afterwards. You'll see what I
mean when I show you Lester's photos on Monday. His coat and tie were
half over his head at the back. And where is his trunk key? You might
say that he got rid of his bag beforehand to save tracing his home,
but he left the trunk. Then why not leave the key? And the things he
had put into the wardrobe from his bed and washstand—pyjamas,
shaving-tackle, and that sort of thing—well, of course a man _might_
lock himself into a pitch-dark wardrobe and then proceed to tidy all
the articles neatly against the front, but it's difficult to see why.”
“Especially if he was drugged. Sure it wasn't an overdose of whisky?
That would explain so many puzzles.” O'Connor loved to impersonate
guileless curiosity at these talks. It moved the Chief Inspector to a
fury at times which the Irishman took as a tribute to his histrionic
powers.
“Any finger prints?” he asked after a moment.
It was Pointer's turn to get even. He gazed on his friend as on a man
past praying for. “Any finger-prints? How many things were there, do
you suppose, that that American and the Manager between them hadn't
pawed over? There was a regular finger-mark jam over everything. Now
I'll tell you another thing. His socks and small things were in the
two top-drawers. Nothing could have been tidier. Even his spare
shoelaces had rubber bands to keep them trim. His underwear, in the
top long drawer, looked as if it were ready for an inspection, but his
things in the bottom drawer—two pairs of trousers and a coat—seemed as
though they had been flung in during an earthquake.”
“Inference—someone was chiefly concerned in pockets.” Jim was so
interested that he forgot his rôle.
“Aye, just so. His trunk was in the same muddle. And remember, no
letters, no papers!”
“You said his trunk and underwear were all oldish and all marked
R.E.?”
“They are.”
There was silence for some time in the room. Then:
“I shall put a personal in all Monday's papers offering a reward of
three pounds for any information concerning his watch. Thank Heaven,
watches have numbers. That may lead us somewhere. Eames' clothes have
a Colonial look to me, and his umbrella has a Toronto mark on it, but
as far as I can see, the watch is our best chance to find out who he
really is, and where he comes from. He entered himself as a dentist,
but that pencil in his pocket was sharpened either by an artist or a
draughtsman of some kind.”
“What about the American?”
“Aye, what about him? And what about the manager, too?”
“The manager? You think he shares your opinion as to the advantages of
a hotel for—let us call it working off old scores?”
“I stopped on my way home to look up his record,” Pointer continued
unmoved; “it's his first job of the kind. But his father was manager
of the Metropole at Scarborough. There's nothing against his character
so far.”
“Ah, just let him wait till you have another go at him.”
“The Enterprise has always been a well conducted house under him.”
“Say no more,” begged O'Connor, “his guilt seems piling up with every
second.”
“I hope to trace that 'phone call on Monday.”
“Disguised voice making you think of the manager? Sherlock Holmes
putting two and two together after having looked at the answer in the
back of the book.” O'Connor laid down his tool to strike an attitude.
“The manager might have sent it, that's my only point so far.”
“And what about the American, the one you have your eye on because you
think he threw his wash-water out of the window? What else have you
ag'in him?”
“He recognised Eames. Or at least he knows something about him, about
his death possibly. I'll bet you anything you like I'm not mistaken.
His control over his face is what you'd expect from a big newspaper
man, but just for a second, when he thought no one was watching, he
looked down at Eames' face with—well, there was recognition of some
kind in his eye, and a lot besides—a lot! I had my small looking-glass
in my hand under my handkerchief and was studying him.”
“The Embassy seems a good reference. Perhaps he was bluffing when he
gave it you?”
Pointer shook his head. “I don't think so. Mr. Beale is a somebody all
right, or I'm much mistaken.”
“You certainly ought to know the genuine article. You see enough of
the imitation. And now I suppose some downtrodden underling of yours
is keeping a skinned orb upon both these desperate criminals?” Jim got
up and stretched himself.
“They are that!” responded the other fervently.
“Alf!” called O'Connor a little later from his opened bedroom door.
“Well?” came in a muffled voice.
“If it was Beale who searched those drawers why that jumbled haste?
Sure he didn't need to fetch the manager till he was ready? Same
brainwave applies to the manager and yourself.”
Pointer made no reply.
“Another thought. If Eames committed suicide why fasten himself up in
a hotel wardrobe. Why not choose a bench in the park?” persisted the
seeker after enlightenment.
The banging of the door between the two rooms was the only reply.