The Chief Inspector gave the manager no time to collect himself. He
went rapidly over Mr. Beale's accusation that it was Mr. Hughes who
had offered the papers of the dead man to him.
“I'm in an awful hole.” The manager poured out a glass of whisky and
soda with a shaking hand.
“Pretty bad,” agreed the unsympathetic police-officer, “but perhaps it
might be worse.” His glance around the room pointed his meaning. The
tumbler was set unsteadily back on the tray.
“I'm a ruined man in any case. I might as well have thrown up the
sponge when you came last time——”
“Perhaps,” murmured Pointer.
“—but here's the true story. You can take it down, and I'll sign it
here before we go to the police-station, or you can arrest me first
and have it afterwards.”
“Let's have it here.”
“Well, the case was exactly as I told you up to that moment when Beale
and I sat here after you had gone, talking over the suicide. I jumped
up, for I suddenly remembered after all that Eames—I mean
Erskine—_had_ given me a cardboard box to keep in the safe. I had
joked him about it, saying it looked like a box of chocolates, and he
had said it wasn't much more important, but still he wished me to take
care of it for him. Without thinking—for it is one of my strictest
rules that I never go to the safe without the booking-clerk or the
hall porter with me, and never in the presence of a visitor, I
unlocked the combination and opened it. That shows how rattled I was
by what had just happened. I pulled out the box——”
“Wrapped in green and white striped paper?”
“That's the one. And I said something about ‘Good God, I forgot to
speak of this to the police.’ I moved towards the door when Mr. Beale
stopped me. He was tremendously excited, and said that as soon as he
had seen Eames' face in the full light he had recognised him as a
dangerous crook whose partner, and doubtless murderer, he (Beale) was
after. In fact, he stuffed me with the same yarn he filled you up with
when you arrested Carter.”
The Chief Inspector gave no sign that he felt the dig.
“He declared that the box would contain plans and signals in cipher
for the use of the gang. Would I let him have a look at it? I
finally—well, I refused at _first_”—the bitterness of the manager's
voice told the whole story—“but you know what a way Mr. Beale has with
him. He claimed to recognise the plan of his own house in the
note-book, and then—I'd just been letting myself go a bit about what a
blow the suicide would be to the hotel, which was having its work cut
out to keep its head above water—he referred to that. Said that he
wanted a scoop for his paper. Finally he offered me one thousand
pounds down on the table for the box, and I let him take it for
another five hundred. Mind you, I'm not trying to clear myself, but I
believed his story. And of course when you arrested Carter I thought
what a Quixotic fool I should have been to have acted differently.”
He stopped and had another drink.
“But that isn't all that you have to tell.”
“You mean the pages torn out of the receipt-book. You know about
them.”
“No, I don't mean them. I know all about that, as you say. I mean
something else.”
“Do you want my confession as to how I killed Eames?” asked the
manager sardonically.
“I want to know first who the man was you showed over the balcony
rooms, including No. 14, at midday on Saturday, August third?”
“That was Sikes. He lends money strictly on the q.t. and at only seven
hundred per cent. But the mere idea that his little hobby might get
about infuriated him so that after you sent that blundering chap of
yours down to investigate he broke the whole thing off. He's aiming to
get into Parliament: that's why he's Sykes with a ‘y’ now.”
“Humph! And had you never seen Erskine before?”
“Never.”
“Nor Mr. Beale?”
“No. I assure you, Inspector, that I had never seen either man
before.”
“And now about those 'phones on Saturday at five o'clock?”
But the manager could only repeat that he knew nothing more than he
had already told the police. He could not recollect 'phoning at all
about five o'clock; but if he had, it had been a vain attempt to get
through to his hatter.
The police-officer asked him to sign his statement.
“We _may_ not have to use it——”
The manager drew a deep breath.
“—but, of course, you must keep yourself within touch of our people.
And now, Mr. Manager, what can you tell me about what has become of
the occupants of rooms eleven and twelve?”
The manager looked over his papers.
“Mrs. Willett left an address in Devonshire to which her letters were
to be forwarded. The hall-porter has it, I suppose.”
“Yes, but Mrs. Willett did not go there. The Devonshire hotel has no
knowledge of her whereabouts beyond the fact that she wrote from here,
and engaged a room on August 16th.”
The manager was unable to help.
“Now as to Miss Leslie, the occupant of number twelve. She left here
on September seventeenth, and all inquiries at the theatre only show
that no one has her address. Apparently she has gone away in the midst
of an engagement without leaving a trace of her plans.”
Here, too, the manager was not able to offer any help.
Pointer swung himself on his homeward bus, not over-pleased with his
men. He had given orders that the occupants of the balcony rooms were
to be kept under constant surveillance, and the two most important
ones had slipped away into the unknown. Miss Leslie he had tried to
trace through the Thompsons, father and son, and even through the
Blacks, but all to no purpose.
“Mrs. Able has very tactfully chosen roast veal,” O'Connor jibed as he
took his seat at the table. “Now, wanderer, what of thy goings to and
fro?”
Pointer merely raised his eyebrows and asked what was under the other
cover, and not until the meal was well out of the way and he had lit a
pipe did he give a rapid review of his “holiday tramp.”
O'Connor thought that the green and white scrap of paper backed up the
manager's rather than Beale's version of the selling of the papers,
and Pointer agreed that it might, but he did not say how much of the
rest of the tale of either man seemed to him likely.
Next morning he had a long interview with Carter, and found that, as
he thought, the Canadian had arrived on July twentieth in London. He
had expected to go straight to a hotel as near Erskine's as possible,
but on arrival at Liverpool Street Station he had been handed a
telegram from “Meunier,” instructing him to come on to Brussels at
once. Erskine had come to meet the train, after engaging a room for
him at the Marvel and one at the Enterprise for himself. The
connecting balcony was too good to lose, so at their hurried meeting
in a corner of the refreshment room, where they posed as strangers,
one of whom handed a newspaper to the other and discussed the weather
for a moment, it was arranged that Erskine was to write to the Marvel
in Carter's name, enclosing enough money to retain number two, while
Carter rushed off to Dover and Ostend. Ten days later Carter had to
come back to London to buy some special tools he could not get in
Brussels, and had spent a couple of hours with Erskine. It was on his
way to the night boat-train that he had bought him the cough medicine.
When he had returned again on the fatal Saturday night of August 3rd
it had been for the express purpose of telling his “pard” that success
was certain. The sight of the policeman when the window opened warned
him that something was wrong. After an interval he had crept out on to
the balcony again and peered into the room. He could see only an empty
bed and Miller on guard. Full of anxiety, he had to start back for
Brussels at once, followed, though he did not know it, by Beale. Then
came hours of torturing uncertainty, and finally the few lines in an
English paper telling of “Eames' suicide.” Carter could hardly bear to
speak of it. But they had each bound themselves before starting from
Canada that in case of danger they would separate at once, and in case
of any accident to the one, the other would “carry on”; also he was
under the most solemn pledges of absolute secrecy to M. Bonnot. So in
bitterness of soul he worked on, only determined to avenge his
friend's death some day.
“And that day's now, Inspector. I won't rest till I find out who it
was that killed Rob, though, mind you, I don't have any doubt as to
the man's identity. But I'll work night and day to get the proof.”
“You think it's——”
“Beale. Of course. So do you, I guess. He didn't know how few papers
Rob had on him. Just because I thought it was dangerous, I didn't give
Rob anything of real importance, and those few I did let him have were
only because he insisted on our sharing the risks together. Of course,
Beale murdered him after he found Rob wouldn't do a deal, which I
don't doubt he tried first. Then he did his best to get me out of the
way, because he knows well enough that I won't find life worth living
till the man who did it is hung. When I came home that night in
Brussels earlier than usual from my work and found Beale at my desk I
wish to heaven I had killed him instead of merely trussing him up and
beating it to Lille. But my pledge to Bonnot tied my hands. They're
free now.” Carter stretched them out along the table. Long, lean,
nervous hands. “At Lille, the little ferret fastened on me again and
pretty nearly did for me.”
“Pretty nearly,” agreed Pointer.
“It was a facer,” Carter repeated sombrely. “You see, I didn't know
whether I had an alibi for Rob's murder or not, for I didn't know what
hours were the vital ones, and I had been back in London, I had been
on the balcony, I remembered even the couple of boxes of vestas I'd
left Rob, and wondered if they would help to trace me out. And suppose
I got clear of the charge of having murdered my pard, I was done for
by the American frame-up. Only your catching Beale, and the way M.
Bonnot handled him, saved me. They wouldn't have let me off under
twenty years over there. Beale has tremendous political influence
through his paper. The police officer who put the warrant through was
some sort of a hyphenated Yank out for a political job.”
“Just so. Yes, I see.” Pointer turned to his note-book. “Now, to go
back to Erskine. Can you tell me what was the cause of the split
between him and the Heilbronners?”
“Rob never told me in so many words. He was in love with Mattie
Heilbronner, you know—Christine told me she'd given you the points of
the case as far as she knew them—but it was some trouble at the
factory at the beginning of the war that started it all. He believed
that he had stumbled on some devilish German plot to poison the
bandages. The mills were turning out hospital supplies, you know. He
was certain that old Heilbronner was at the back of it, and after that
all was over between them but the burial. Yet even so, when I had
knocked my first idea into workable shape, he insisted that the fair
thing to do was to offer it to the Amalgamated. They turned it down
and began hounding Rob and me out of the business. I won't go into it
all, but it only stiffened us. I worked my ideas into something better
and tried Bonnot of Lyons. It was really while I was lying in the
hospital there that I had come across a replica of an old loom which
gave me my first glimmering of an idea. Bonnot told you himself how he
took the thing up—cautiously at first and then enthusiastically. The
difficulty, however, for Rob and me was to get to Europe. We decided
to use Mrs. Erskine's money for that purpose, as it wouldn't save the
mills, and started away by different boats under assumed names. And
now, Inspector, will you let me help you? Or must I try on my own, or
with a private detective, to solve the how and the why of Rob's death?
_Who_ did it I feel pretty sure of, as I said.”
Pointer decided quickly. He could easier keep Carter under observation
in France than in England. To have had a hand in his partner's death,
that death that removed from him the necessity to repay past loans,
that left him in undisputed possession of a huge fortune,—he must have
had an accomplice. Any effort to communicate with the actual poisoner
would be far more difficult to carry out undetected in Nice than in
London.
“Thank you, Mr. Carter, for your offer. I am starting as soon as I can
get away for France—for Nice. I shall be very glad if you care to
come——”
“Care to come! You bet I do!”
“But you understand that it may be some time before I can ask your
help. There is a good deal of clearing up work—mere routine—to be done
first.” His tone implied that when a stroke of real genius was felt to
be needed, Carter's hour would come.
“I quite understand. As long as I can hope to be of any help—at any
time—I'll come. Christine feels as I do. We can't marry until this
thing is cleared up. She's as keen on seeing justice done Rob as I am,
or nearly so. He wasn't her partner as he was mine. If you'll come
downstairs we'll go around to her hotel and hear what she says for
herself.”
Christine had treated herself to comfortable rooms in a quiet hotel
near Baker Street. She was as emphatic as Carter that the one thing
for them to do now was to find out and bring to justice the murderer
of Robert Erskine. “Though I certainly wasn't much of a help to you?”
Her voice made it a question.
“Oh, I don't know about that. I don't deny that I hoped you might have
got hold of some direct clue while at the villa,—but that's always a
matter of luck, and Mrs. Erskine looks the kind of woman to keep her
own confidence—or the confidence of another, even supposing she knows
more than she chooses to say. Besides, remember you gave the very
important tip of the loaded revolver which she keeps at hand, and the
suggestion about her body-guard, as you think her friends may be.”
“You don't agree with me?”
The police-officer laughed. “Pointer's away on his holiday.
Impenetrable official reserve is the order of the day now, and on your
and Mr. Carter's part absolute, unquestioning obedience. Is that a
bargain? Thank you; I was sure that you would both see the necessity
for my making that an essential of your co-operation. And you must be
patient, Miss West. As I told Mr. Carter, there'll be a lot of spade
work to be done, if we are to discover any clues at Nice, before there
can be any question of either of you helping.”
Like her fiancé, Christine said she did not care how long she had to
wait, if only she could be of some use.
“Very well, then, we quite understand one another.” Pointer seemed
regardless of the fact that Carter's real thoughts were a subject of
much doubt to him, and that some of his speculations about them were
very far from being understood by that young man—“and agree that no
plan can be drawn up until I have reconnoitred thoroughly.”
“Would it be a help,” asked Christine, “if I were to stop with Mrs.
Erskine again?”
“I can't say yet.”
“I don't think I like the Chief Inspector as much as I did Mr.
Pointer.” Christine's smile robbed the speech of its bluntness.
“Oh, don't say that!” implored the officer. “Do be original and have a
good word for the police! But now about our going. Mr. Carter can
start at once. I shall follow by the day after to-morrow at the
outside. If you”—he turned to the Canadian—“will put up at, say, the
Negresco or the Angleterre, I shall find your name at once and be able
to get into touch with you. Should we meet by chance, we are, of
course, strangers. And you, Miss West, if you will let Mr. Carter know
where you are stopping near Nice——”
“It won't be Avignon!”
“—you could meet quietly. But not more than once a week, please, and,
naturally, always at different places and on different days. Through
him I shall have your address, and if you'll excuse my addressing you
inside any letter or telegram or 'phone as Miss”—his eyes fell on an
open magazine—“Miss Gladys——”
Christine shivered.
“—you will know that the message is from me. What name are you going
by, Mr. Carter?”
“Crane.”
“Good, and you are starting?”
“To-night, if I can get a ticket. But for God's sake don't let Beale
slip through your fingers. Mark my words, _he's_ the man!”
“He won't slip.” Pointer shook hands and walked briskly away. He had
arranged matters to his liking and his plans were in his own keeping.
He wired to the Nice police to be ready to keep an observant eye on
Mr. Crane. He would have been glad of the Canadian's immediate help,
but he intended to take no risks of confusing the trail.
Pointer's first act on arriving at Nice was to 'phone up the Canadian
at the Negresco. Over the wire he obtained a minute account of the way
he had spent his two days on the Côte d'Azur. Then he rang up his
police friend, and Carter's account of himself was verified in every
particular. So far so good. He next presented himself at Mrs.
Erskine's. That lady was lying down with a severe headache when his
card was taken in to her, but she sent him out word to please call
back later, as she very much appreciated his having come to see her.
Pointer found her quite full of questions—for her—as to Carter's
release. She evidently feared that the police had been hoodwinked by
some plausible villain.
“I'm not a revengeful woman,” she explained with her plaintive Scotch
accent, “but I do not want the murderer of my son to escape.”
The Chief Inspector had apparently no explanation to offer beyond the
fact of Carter's belated, but absolutely water-tight, alibi.
“Well, of course you must know your business best,” she murmured from
among her cushions, “but it would take more than a Frenchman's word to
have made me set that man free!”
She asked very kindly after Christine, and he did not mention the fact
of that young lady's coming marriage to the object of Mrs. Erskine's
suspicions.
Mrs. Erskine evidently feared that it would be quite useless, but she
had not the slightest objection to his going over again all the
Erskine letters in her possession.
“But Robert's letters are missing. You remember the packet I showed
you in Paris?”
Pointer did.
“When we returned here—Mrs. Clark came to fetch me: she thought I was
too ill to be left to Marie's care alone—the letters had gone. I am
sure I placed them in the top of my trunk, or saw Marie put them there
just before we started. I had them under my pillow before that. But
when Marie unpacked here there was no sign of them. On the whole, I am
not sure that their presence was not more of a grief than their
absence. But I confess the thought of those letters, sacred to me by
my loss, having been lost by some carelessness—” She paused with a
worried frown.
It was nearly half past eleven before Pointer made his appearance on
the following morning.
Mrs. Erskine had had an old trunk brought down from the attic in
which, as she sent him word, she kept everything belonging to family
matters of any kind.
There were several letters from Mr. Henry Erskine which were new to
the officer. They were all affectionate in tone. It was quite clear
from them that he only contemplated remaining away a twelvemonth on
his brother's ranch. In all of them, however, there was no faintest
clue, no hint of any mystery. The rest of the box concerned the
Abercrombies more than the Erskines, and the Chief Inspector gained a
very good idea of the stiff but honourable upbringing of Margaret
Erskine from them. He went through them and the old books, old bills,
and personal trifles which the trunk contained with amazing speed and
thoroughness. Then he shut the lid and stood awhile in thought. As he
stood there, he heard a soft thud in the next room. To a practised
ear, there is only one thing which makes that sound. A safe-door was
being closed in the wall adjoining. A few minutes later he heard Mrs.
Erskine speaking from the room beside him. She told Marie to be on
hand to let out the gentleman—she had referred to the Chief Inspector
as connected with her firm of lawyers—as soon as he should be
finished. She did not mention refreshments, he noted, though the day
was hot, and the work dry and dusty. Like Christine, Pointer saw that
the good lady did not encourage unnecessary expenditure.
He heard her deliberate steps cross the marble hall and the front door
shut. He heard Marie go into her mistress's room. Like a shadow he
stepped into the drawing-room, of which the door stood open. From an
oriel window he looked down at the car waiting below. There was a man
sitting in one of the front chairs and a handsome, painted, plump
woman on the back seat, dressed in the very height of fashion. Pointer
eyed her keenly through his glass from a discreet position behind the
curtains. Her black eyes were fastened on the front door. These were
evidently the Clarks, and even after Mrs. Erskine had taken her seat
he kept his glass levelled until the car turned up the drive and
purred out of sight.
He slipped back into the little room where the trunk still stood, and
when the maid looked in, after tidying the bedroom next door, she
found him apparently hard at work. He glanced up cheerily, to meet a
very gloomy stare.
“It's going to be a long job, eh, monsieur?”
“Looks like it. By the way, I forgot to say something to madame. At
what hour does she return?”
“Only just in time to dress for dinner. There is a great charity
bazaar on at the Castle at which madame has promised to help. She gave
us all tickets for the grounds.”
“Were you going, too? I heard that there were to be all sorts of
amusements.”
“I was going, but, if you wish it, I can stay . . .?”
Hope shone in her face again. Perhaps the jaunt would yet come off.
“No! no!” protested Pointer in genuine horror. “I may be here for
hours.”
A bank note was slipped into her hand. “Go and enjoy yourself, _ma
fille_, and drink my health at lunch.”
Marie was in the seventh heaven, what with the chance to get off for
the day after all, the twenty francs, and the compliment to her thirty
years. Within a quarter of an hour a _voiture_, with Marie, her
husband, the chef and Mrs. Clark's maid, drove off briskly; for, as
Marie said, in what better hands could the villa be left than in that
of a gentleman connected with madame's solicitors?
Pointer bolted the doors, and then walked rapidly through the house
from cellar to attic. Major Vaughan and his man were away at Monte
Carlo, the maid had told him, and he had it all to himself. He took
his coat off, and after his rapid general survey examined the rooms in
detail. Finally he came to Mrs. Erskine's bedroom. The walls were of
grey silk, with here and there grey velvet medallions. After a little
measuring he made for the panel beside the window. As on all the
others, oxydised metal traceries ornamented the oval. He pressed an
ornament which looked the shiniest to his keen eyes. A very few
experiments taught him the trick, and the panel swung open on its
hinges. At the same time three gongs clanged in muffled fury. Pointer
had spent some of his minutes, as he went over the house, to good
effect in stuffing sofa cushions around all electric alarums, or the
din would have been terrible. The telephone bell beside the bed rang
insistently.
“'Ello! 'Ello!” he called in answer; “yes, it is I, Guillaume, and not
a burglar. It was as well I had that little chat with you this
morning, eh?” and he hung up the receiver. Then he turned back to the
safe. A few minutes went by before even his skilled eyes found the
right knob which should have been turned first to silence the alarums.
The safe had been bought off a firm which had spared no expense in its
installation evidently. It was the only one on the premises, and he
hoped to find some interesting things in it. He looked at the safe
sitting like a shrine deep in its little niche with great respect. “So
it's an Aglae. Humph!”
The Aglae safes, turned out very sparingly by Creusot, are the last
word in their line. He knew them well. There was one in the
Commissioner's office at the Yard. They are pretty to look at. No
cumbersome, easily detected combination lock here. A little slit,
looking as innocent as a slot-machine, faced him, but any key, whether
of another Aglae or not, which was not the right one would set a
powerful alarum ringing against the light metal of the outer door
which no cushion could deaden, and it would ring until the right key
was inserted, if need be for thirty-five days. If a burglar, caring
nothing for keys, tried his usual tactics of cutting, he would find an
outer case which let itself be opened with ease, and out would stream
a volume of gas calculated to render anyone unconscious who stood near
it, even though the windows were open. Some Aglae had an alternative
plan by which a revolver emptied its six cartridges in the direction
where the first cut was made. Altogether, a slight acquaintance with
an Aglae was distinctly advisable for any up-to-date cracksman if he
wanted a chance to show his talents elsewhere.
Pointer whistled softly. There was only one man in Europe who could
help him. In Barcelona, at the foot of Tibidabo, lives a Catalan, a
Senor Foch, who works in a simple little shop with his son for the
police of seven countries; and lucky it was for the police that
honesty had been the motto of the two men, for there is nothing that
can be done to lock or key that they cannot do. Only a Foch could copy
the key of this safe, supposing Pointer could lay his hands on it for
a moment. The Catalans worked only on their own terms. Measurements,
weight, and impressions had to be taken, according to their strict
rules, or they would refuse the job.
He replaced everything as he had found it, took off the silencers from
the various alarums, and proceeded with his room to room inspection.
In Major Vaughan's flat he found some things which interested him
greatly. He even went so far as to take a tracing of some boots and
shoes he found up there, and very familiar the outline would have
looked to Watts, too, had he seen it.
It was close on six o'clock when he finished, and the only results to
the eye for a very fatiguing day was a little cardboard box of a kind
which had contained stationery, a tiny oval box retrieved from a dusty
corner of the attic, and a little yellow pill-box, marked “Mrs.
Erskine, 14 Ave. de Paris, Biarritz,” that had come from a deep pocket
of an old travelling bag. Yet with these, and his tracings, and his
other discoveries, the Chief Inspector felt more than satisfied.
Next morning he took his leave of Mrs. Erskine, and acknowledged that
she had been right in thinking that the papers which he had looked
over contained no clue.
“I'm quite sure that the criminal is that man you let go, Carter!”
He did not contradict her. “He's where we can put our hands on him at
any moment,” he assured her as he bowed himself out. He had timed his
departure to coincide with the hour at which he had learned from Marie
that the major and his man were expected to arrive from Monte Carlo.
The major would sometimes go regularly to the Casino for a week at a
time, or, as now, just for an occasional flutter; on the other hand,
months might go by without his trying his luck at the tables, where he
generally won. And indeed a week might pass without his leaving his
flat at all. He had been gassed in the war, Marie informed Pointer,
prompted by his easy questions, “and was now _un original_—_un
sauvage_, yet often still of a charm!”
The major returned in a dusty motor while Pointer still lingered over
some flowers behind a bush of heliotrope. The valet whipped open the
door. The major, a shrunken little man, stood blinking irritably into
the sunlight with red-rimmed eyes. He caught sight of the Clarks just
leaving in their tennis clothes.
“You look like solid ghosts,” he grunted in reply to their greetings.
“Won pots of money, you lucky man?” asked the lady.
“Oh, pots and pans!” he nodded. “As you say, I am a lucky devil. Know
the difference between a lucky devil and an unlucky one, Clark. You
_ought_, by Gad, but _do_ you?”
Mr. Clark, a sunburnt, good-natured looking man, apparently gave it
up.
“A lucky devil helps to skin others, an unlucky one can only be
skinned,” and the major, with the cackle Christine so much disliked,
walked into the house.
“Of a charm certainly!” repeated Pointer to himself with a faint grin
as he emerged from behind the flowering shrub and walked down to the
police, where his snapshot of the major was developed and enlarged, in
time for a copy to be despatched to the Yard in the evening, together
with a pressing request for further particulars as to the officer in
question.
Carter was next met in Pointer's quiet room at a Meublé near the
station. The detective officer had no directions to give the Canadian,
but asked a good many questions about Robert's letters, and to the
answers he paid the closest attention. That done, he took his
departure by the afternoon express. He got out at Marseilles, where he
waited for Watts to join him. That detective had been instructed by
telegram to leave Mr. Beale to the sole care of his mate and join the
Chief Inspector at the noisy, dirty port as soon as possible. Watts
was only too glad to descend from the crowded train and make his way
to the hotel, where Pointer gave him an account of the past day's
work.
“I don't want amateur help!” Pointer examined some _bouillabaisse_
with quite undeserved suspicion. “Carter, even supposing he were free
from suspicion—which he isn't—may be a useful chap, or may be an
absolute bungler. I haven't time to train budding talent in this
case.”
“And the young lady?”
“Is staying at Cannes. She's very keen to help, and I don't say that
she may not be useful, too; but give me the real thing, Watts. Had I
been able to get a good woman-detective into the villa in her place, a
good many doubts as to the character of Mrs. Erskine's ‘bodyguard’
might be over. However, I couldn't.”
Two nights later a loud ringing and banging on the door of the villa
disturbed the occupants just after they had separated for the night.
It was quite late, for they had all been to a theatre and supper
party. A postman stood at the door. Could he see Madame Erskine about
a cable which had come, marked “Urgent,” and which he was not sure was
meant for her, as beyond the name there was no address.
Mrs. Erskine, whose bedroom lights had only been twinkling a short
time, put her head over the window-sill and said that she would come
down at once. The man was told to enter, and the front door closed.
A figure crouching behind some bushes sprang lightly erect, waited a
moment or two, listening intently at a shuttered window—the window
into the lower hall—then, lifting a ladder lying buried in the earth,
stood it deftly against Mrs. Erskine's window ledge, and was up with
the swiftness of a cat. He took off his rubber shoes and left them on
the sill. Then he swung himself into the room and looked at the safe.
The door stood wide open, the key was in it. In a second the black
figure slipped to the bedroom door. Mrs. Erskine had left it locked.
He strode back to the safe, took out its key and weighed it carefully,
though swiftly, on a little balance. Followed several quick
measurements taken with a sort of dialled spanner, after which four
impressions had to be made in boxes containing the special Foch
compound. Balance, spanner, and boxes were returned to a little black
bag the man wore strapped to his waist. This done with the utmost but
unflurried haste, the key was replaced in the safe, and the figure
vanished the way it had come. The ladder was laid on the grass for a
moment, till the ground under the window had been smoothed with a
rake-head, also produced from the bag. In another minute ladder and
man seemed to melt, rather than to pass, through the gate.
The telegram was not for Mrs. Erskine after all, as a glance at its
obviously business contents told her. It took some time to make this
clear to the postman, who was an “extra,” and spoke with an atrocious
Basque accent—acquired during the retreat from Mons, when Watts'
company had got inextricably entangled with some of the blue Bérets.
Finally the postman grasped the truth, apologised, and “returned to
the post office to make further inquiries.” These seemed to lead him
to a small hotel in a back street, after a change of toilet in the
nearest dark doorway, which included turning his coat inside out,
ripping off some narrow red braid from each trouser leg, and
substituting one cap for another. That done, Watts went to bed, to
speculate with some curiosity on exactly what had taken place in the
villa during the colloquy in the central hall. He knew better than to
ask his superior, and finally consoled himself with the thought that
he would doubtless hear of it some day under “From information which
has just come to hand.”