Menace for Dr. Morelle

by Ernest Dudley

  If she delayed obtaining that information, he might change his mind. Anything might happen.

  Upon which conclusion Miss Frayle flurried round like a miniature whirlwind. Gathering up hat and hand-bag, notebook and pencil, she paused long enough only to scribble a triumphant note which she left propped conspicuously against the telephone.

  Have gone to see Charles Gresham.

  She had a fleeting but shattering vision of Doctor Morelle’s icy rage upon reading a message so scanty and even rebellious-sounding, and added:

  He telephoned urgently. Said he had news about the case. Follow me immediately.

  She added the address, rather liking the ‘Follow me immediately’ part. It had drama. It savoured somewhat of Doctor Morelle himself.

  Her satisfactory feeling of resourcefulness, engendered by her decision to act on her own, was dampened slightly by her inability to find a taxi. One cruised past on the opposite side of the street as she slammed the front door after her. It was obviously driven by a graven image, however, for the figure at the wheel made not the slightest effort to turn his head as Miss Frayle uttered shrill cries and eagerly waved her arms. Majestically, the taxi sailed on.

  Catching the amused glance of a passer-by, Miss Frayle hurried on, with the uncomfortable conviction that trying to get a taxi was like attempting to change the forces of nature. Only more humiliating. It was not until she reached Oxford Street that a taxi swerved to the kerb beside her, and to her amazement the cheerful-faced driver leaned confidentially towards her.

  “Keb, miss?”

  Ten minutes later she was pressing the bell of Charles Gresham’s ground-floor flat.

  She knew it was his flat by the visiting card bearing his name framed in a little brass bracket under the bell. She noticed the front door was open an inch as she waited for someone to answer her ring. While she waited, she reflected on the best line for her to take with Gresham.

  Tell him that Doctor Morelle would be following her very soon? And that in the meantime she had come along to hear what he had to say?

  If he proved difficult, she thought she might remind him of her meeting with him in the mews after she had discovered Albany lying there wounded.

  Reaching the conclusion he hadn’t heard the first ring, she rang again. She heard the echo of the bell through the partially opened door. Several more moments passed. Still no answer.

  Miss Frayle frowned, considering the open door. She pushed it gently with her gloved hand, and it swung slightly wider. He could not be far away, she reflected. It could not have been much more than half an hour at the most since he had telephoned her. Probably he had slipped out for a minute, purposely leaving the door ajar. No doubt gone to get some cigarettes. Since he had telephoned, he would certainly be expecting Doctor Morelle.

  She wondered what his reaction would be when he found it was only her. She rang again. No reply.

  Miss Frayle’s frown deepened.

  As was her custom in a situation where she found herself considering her next course of action, Miss Frayle asked herself what Doctor Morelle would do in identical circumstances.

  The answer to this one was easy.

  She had no doubt whatever that he would merely walk straight in. And at the same time take the opportunity to have a good look round. When his presence was discovered, he would blandly apologize and say he considered his action better than hanging around a half-open door.

  Summing up her courage, Miss Frayle walked in.

  Chapter Twenty-Six – Miss Frayle Plays Detective

  Her heart was fluttering, and Miss Frayle felt pretty much as she imagined a fly must feel when buzzing around a web. The only difference being that in her case she knew the web was there and the fly didn’t. She stood uncertainly in the little hall, not quite sure what to do next. Behind her the door bumped to, then banged open again and remained ajar.

  The hall was unremarkable, with pale grey wallpaper, hung with a couple of incomprehensible modern pictures. Miss Frayle saw the tiny kitchenette at the end. A door opened into the sitting-room. Through the door, on the far side of the room, she could glimpse a door leading to another room. That was closed.

  For some seconds she remained nervously hesitant without moving, not quite knowing what to do. It seemed silly just to stand there waiting. She had an uncomfortable feeling he might after all be in. Perhaps in that further room with the door shut. In which case he might not have heard the bell.

  She gave a little cough and called out:

  “Mr. Gresham.”

  Her voice fell emptily. She tried again.

  “Mr. Gresham. It’s me—or should it be ‘I’?” she muttered to herself: “I never can remember. It’s Miss Frayle.”

  For some inexplicable reason, calling out his name increased her nervousness.

  She wasn’t actually frightened. It was simply that the sound of his name echoing in the little hall made her suddenly acutely aware of the fact that Charles Gresham wasn’t exactly an easy proposition to handle. He had, she had little doubt, done his best to kill Sir Hugh Albany. Apart from the definite possibility that he was mixed up one way or another in the murder of Stefan Zusky.

  Still, it was broad daylight. She was within shouting distance of people passing by in the street. She drew a deep breath and reassured herself. All the same, she was forced to admit, it wasn’t at all turning out the way she had visualized it.

  In her imagination, she had pictured herself calling on Charles Gresham. He would open the door, ask her in, and she would keep him with a few questions until Doctor Morelle arrived. But it hadn’t gone at all like that. It was somewhat disconcerting, to say the least of it. The quietness of the flat, its obvious emptiness.

  A sudden panic engulfed her and she turned to escape. Then she felt extremely foolish and paused. It seemed rather ridiculous to enter the flat and leave it again without even looking round. She had a swift image of the Doctor, his sardonic laughter if he learned of the way in which she had acted. Here was a golden chance to take a quick look round, and she was passing it by from sheer silly nerves.

  Miss Frayle squared her shoulders and marched boldly into the sitting-room.

  She stood in the middle of the room and stared about her. Though she did not quite know what she should be looking for, she was nevertheless acutely conscious she ought to be on the look-out for something.

  The room had that impersonal quality of not being much lived in. It was decorated with the same pale grey paper as the hall. Plainly furnished with fat square modern chairs and chesterfield, it had a cocktail cabinet in a corner, open, with a whisky decanter on the flap. It had about an inch of whisky in it. A heavy cut-glass tumbler lay on the rug and Miss Frayle stared at it without picking it up. It had evidently been empty when it fell, for she noticed the rug was dry.

  As she turned from her contemplation of the glass, a scrap of paper tucked between the cushion and the side of a chair caught her eye. She pulled the scrap out. It was a telegram. It was addressed to Albany, at his Jermyn Street address.

  Miss Frayle read: IMPERATIVE SEE X STOP IF ANYTHING HAPPENS SEE PURPLE LAKE STOP WILL BE AT YOUR FLAT TONIGHT STOP PLEASE INFORM. The telegram was signed ‘ZUSKY’.

  Miss Frayle goggled at it. Then, with a sudden resolute movement, slipped it into her hand-bag. She looked around her with nervous furtiveness as she did so. If Charles Gresham were to step in at that moment, she hadn’t an excuse in the world.

  She clipped her hand-bag shut, went back to the open door of the sitting-room and called again.

  “Mr. Gresham! Mr. Gresham!”

  Silence.

  Miss Frayle began to wonder if in some obscure way this was a plot. A plot to get her here. But what for, if no one was awaiting her arrival? She glanced at her wrist-watch. It was now three-quarters of an hour ago since Gresham had telephoned asking Doctor Morelle to come along as quickly as possible because he had information for him.

  She wondered disappointedly if he had changed hi
s mind and cleared out. At the thought, she looked into the hall to see if she could find any hats or coats there. There were none. She opened the front door wider and looked out to see if there was evidence of a porter whom she might question. Evidently, however, there was no one.

  Miss Frayle began to experience a sense of oppression and disappointment. She was uncertain what to do. She couldn’t just hang around outside. That would look so silly when Doctor Morelle arrived, if Gresham hadn’t turned up by then. And she couldn’t go back to Harley Street for fear of meeting the Doctor on his way after reading the note she had left for him.

  She returned to the sitting-room and stood there looking timidly around her, frowning indecisively.

  “This is all very silly.”

  And, squaring her shoulders again, she marched decidedly across to the closed door leading to the other room which, so far, she had not explored.

  The room was empty.

  Miss Frayle glanced round and saw it was in a considerable state of disorder. Rather smaller than the sitting-room, in one corner was a double divan bed, littered with clothes and some pigskin luggage. A dressing-table stood by the window, and there were a couple of large, built-in cupboards, one of which was open. A trail of clothes led from it to the bed. Whoever had been packing had gathered up armsful of garments, shedding some of them on their way to the bed. A heavy blue silk dressing-gown, without a cord, draped from the end of the bed to the floor, where it had been flung carelessly.

  Even for Miss Frayle, it required little powers of deduction to see that someone, presumably Gresham, had been in the midst of packing to go away. And from the disordered way things had been pulled out of drawers and cupboards, and pushed into the suit-cases on the bed, the packing had been performed in no slight haste.

  Miss Frayle advanced gingerly into the room.

  Another door was open, leading into the bathroom. She threw a glance at it, then confined her attention to the bedroom. As before, she had no very clear idea of what it was she was looking for. She was vaguely conscious of the telegram she had picked up and which was now in her bag, wondering dimly if she might spot something which would tie up with it. Some clue which might perhaps have a bearing on that other clue. The clue of the picture called the Purple Lake.

  She crossed to the dressing-table under the window. There was nothing of particular interest that Miss Frayle could see. Some brushes, bottles of hair-lotion, a racing almanac, a large ashtray.

  Miss Frayle turned away from the dressing-table. She glanced at the open cupboard. One or two suits hung in it. Some pairs of shoes lay in a row on the rail at the bottom. She shrugged helplessly, turned slowly, taking in the rest of the room. She had to admit to herself she didn’t know what to look for, what next move to make.

  She had a vision of Doctor Morelle and how he would have taken command of the situation. Impassive, saturnine, his keen glance taking in every detail, he would have stood there. Magically, miraculously, he would have been able to describe in detail exactly what had recently transpired in the room. Even, Miss Frayle thought wryly, deduced just exactly where Gresham was at this moment and what he was doing.

  Making up her mind at last, she decided the best thing after all she could do was to go out and wait around until either Gresham or the Doctor showed up.

  She had reached the bedroom door when she saw the closed cupboard. More from a sense of thoroughness than from any particular curiosity, she crossed to it and opened the door.

  So far as the immediate present was concerned, Miss Frayle’s search was at an end.

  In the shadowed recess of the cupboard, Charles Gresham lay back against the clothes, for all the world as if he were attempting to conceal himself. His protuberant blue eyes gazed up at her as she, in turn, stared back at him in utter stupefaction. Then, as she stepped backwards, her eyes still fixed on his, he moved slowly towards her.

  He tottered out of the cupboard with a slow lurch, silently sagging forward so that he fell on hands and knees. Slowly he rolled over and lay face upwards, still staring at her with those pale blue eyes.

  Miss Frayle looked down at him in freezing horror. For a moment, unable to move, she contrived to utter one strangled exclamation as Gresham continued to regard her with the meaningless stare of the dead. Tightly knotted around his neck was the blue cord of the blue silk dressing-gown. Over his temple a livid bruise.

  Miss Frayle took in the spectacle like a fleeting, horrifying image flashed on a screen. Then she turned and blindly ran.

  In her long association with Doctor Morelle, she had encountered not a few unpleasantnesses and had, on occasions, been horribly scared. She had never been alone like this, though, and seen anything as terrifying as the thing that had just toppled out of the cupboard to collapse before her. Certainly she had never been more frightened.

  Gasping and choking, incoherent, half-sobbing with shock and terror, she fled wildly from the scene.

  She gained the street just as a taxi drove away and its tall, lean passenger turned towards her. Miss Frayle goggled at that sardonic countenance which bore upon it a familiarly foreboding expression of impending storm.

  Unable to speak, she cast a terrified glance over her shoulder, waved her arms feebly and uttered an incomprehensible gurgling sound.

  Then Miss Frayle dropped in a neat, quiet faint at Doctor Morelle’s feet.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven – The Unbolted Door

  When Miss Frayle regained consciousness, she was lying on the big square chesterfield in the sitting-room.

  She opened her eyes without even enjoying the doubtful pleasure of groaning: “Where am I?” She knew at once where she was. The knowledge hit her with swift and horrid impact. She sat up, saw Doctor Morelle by the writing-desk. He was replacing the telephone receiver.

  He threw her a saturnine glance.

  “My dear Miss Frayle! I am happy to observe you have returned to such consciousness as you habitually achieve. I have just telephoned Inspector Hood. He will be here shortly.”

  She gulped and swung her legs down from the sofa. She blushed as she realized what a fool she had made herself appear before his eyes. Why did she have to go and faint like that, she asked herself miserably, and Doctor Morelle having to pick her up and carry her into the house as if she were some stupid, frightened child? It was humiliating. Infuriating. Her glance had unwittingly travelled towards the door to the bedroom and she suddenly heard herself asking in a broken, husky whisper:

  “You—you’ve seen . . .? In there . . .?”

  “Why, otherwise, would I telephone for Inspector Hood?” he rapped. “I do not require the assistance of Scotland Yard to revive you from yet another of your routine fainting fits!”

  Miss Frayle saw he was in good form. She consoled herself, however, with the reflection that perhaps the sting of his words was delivered as a deliberate restorative. At all events those biting tones acted upon her like cold water dashed in her face.

  “It’s enough to make anyone faint,” she defended herself stoutly. “To go into a strange man’s flat and find him dead in a cupboard. And I didn’t know he was dead at first. He moved——”

  “Naturally. He had been wedged in the cupboard. Your opening the door dislodged the body. What were you doing in there? Why did you open the cupboard?”

  “I was looking for clues.”

  Doctor Morelle rolled his eyes to the ceiling.

  “The orders I gave to Miss Carfax applied equally to you. I should have thought even your intelligence could have grasped that. What are you doing here at all?”

  “Didn’t you get my note?”

  “Kindly do not reply to my questions with other questions. . . .”

  “But I left a note for you in the study,” she quavered.

  “I have not been to Harley Street,” he said between his teeth. “I have been extremely busy. Explain. Expound. But be brief.”

  “I had lunch with Sherry,” she began, “and then I——”

  �
��Desist from embroidering!” he interrupted. “Relevant facts only, if you please. I am patently aware of your return to Harley Street. You say you left me a note. . . .”

  “Charles Gresham telephoned to say he wanted to see you at once,” she replied, somewhat crossly. “I wish you’d let me explain things my own way, Doctor. You only muddle me.”

  The Doctor opened his mouth, then shut it again without speaking, as if words failed him. The impact of his bad temper was having a favourable effect upon her. The colour had returned to her cheeks, her eyes had lost their scared look and her voice was stronger. Perhaps it was that which restrained him.

  “At all events,” he said, his voice controlled, “I assume the murdered man in there is Charles Gresham.”

  She nodded vigorously.

  “He’s the man I saw in the mews after I’d found Sir Hugh Albany, and the same man that I saw at Lady Tonbridge’s. As I was trying to tell you, he telephoned, asking you to see him at once. I explained you were out——”

  “How long ago did this telephone conversation transpire?”

  “Less than an hour ago.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Fifteen to twenty minutes, perhaps. Nearer fifteen.”

  “How long did it take you to get here from Harley Street?”

  “About half an hour. I didn’t decide to come right away after his telephone call. I thought about it a bit first. Then at first I couldn’t get a taxi——”

  “You arrived here, and then?” he interrupted her.

  “I rang the bell when I arrived here, but no one answered. Then I thought it better to go in, so I did so. The front door of the flat was open, you see.”

  “I saw. You entered? Did you touch anything?”

  “No,” she answered promptly. “I’m always so careful about that, Doctor——” She broke off suddenly. “Oh, but wait. I—I did find this, and picked it up and put it in my bag.”