“What do you read, mostly?” asked Duff, interested.
“Mystery stories,” Kennaway smiled.
“To a man with a bad heart? I should think the excitement -“
“Bah,” put in Tait. “There’s little enough excitement in the things. I have been a criminal lawyer for many years back home, and as far as the word murder goes -” He stopped suddenly.
“You were about to say,” suggested Duff gently, “that murder is not, where you are concerned, an exciting topic.”
“What if I was?” demanded Tait, rather warmly.
“I was only wondering,” continued Duff, “why this particular murder brought on such a serious spell this morning?”
“Oh, well - meeting it in one’s own life is quite different from reading about it in books. Or even from talking about it in a courtroom.”
“Quite, quite,” agreed Duff. He was silent, drumming with his fingers on the arm of his chair. Suddenly he turned, and with the speed and precision of a machine-gun began to fire questions at the lawyer.
“You heard nothing on that third floor last night?”
“Nothing.”
“No outcry? No call for help?”
“Nothing, I tell you.”
“No scream from an old man brutally attacked?”
“I have told you, sir -“
“I am asking you, Mr. Tait. I meet you in the hallway, and you appear to be strong and well. You have heard rumors of a murder, but you do not know who was killed. You walk with a firm step to the doorway of the parlor. You glance around the faces inside, and in another moment you are on the floor, in what seems a mortal attack.”
“They come like that -“
“Do they? Or did you see some one in that room -“
“No! No!”
“Some face, perhaps -“
“I tell you, no!”
The old man’s eyes were blazing, the hand that held the glass trembled. Kennaway came forward.
“Inspector, I beg your pardon,” he said quietly. “You are going too far. This man is ill -“
“I know,” admitted Duff softly. “I’m sorry. I was wrong, and I apologize. I forgot, you see - I have my job to do, and I forgot.” He arose. “None the less, Mr. Tait,” he added, “I think that some surprising situation dawned upon you as you stood in that doorway this morning, and I intend to find out what it was.”
“It is your privilege to think anything you please, sir,” replied the old man, and as Duff went out he carried a picture of the great criminal lawyer, gray of face and breathing heavily, sitting on a Victorian sofa and defying Scotland Yard.
Hayley was waiting in the lobby. “Been through the rooms of every man in the party,” he reported. “No fragment of watch-chain. No gray coat with a torn pocket. Nothing.”
“Of course not,” Duff replied. “Practically every mother’s son of ‘em has been out of the hotel this morning, and naturally any evidence like that went with them.”
“I really must get back to my duties at Vine Street,” Hayley went on. “You’ll drop in after you’ve finished, old man?”
Duff nodded. “Go along. What was it that street orchestra was playing? There’s a Long, Long Trail A-Winding. It’s true, Hayley. Damned true.”
“I’m very much afraid it is,” the other answered. “See you at the station.”
As Duff turned, his worried frown disappeared. Pamela Potter was beckoning to him from the parlor doorway. He went over to her at once.
“I was wondering, Inspector,” she said, “if you want to see mother now, I believe I can arrange it.”
“Good,” he answered. “I’ll go up with you in a moment.” He stepped inside the parlor, and with one final warning against leaving Broome’s Hotel for the present, he dismissed the assembled crowd. “I shall want to see the five remaining members of your party,” he said to Lofton.
“Of course. The moment they come in, I’ll let you know,” Lofton agreed. He went on down the lobby, with Fenwick still arguing at his heels.
At the door of the suite occupied by Pamela Potter and her mother, Duff waited while the girl went inside. After several moments, during which he heard the sounds of a discussion going on beyond the door, the young woman returned and admitted him.
The shades were all drawn in the sitting-room where he now found himself. Gradually accustoming his eyes to the gloom, he perceived, on a chaise lounge in the darkest corner, the figure of a woman. He stepped nearer.
“This is Inspector Duff, Mother,” said Pamela Potter.
“Oh, yes,” answered the woman faintly.
“Mrs. Potter,” remarked the detective, feeling rather ill at ease, “I am extremely sorry to trouble you. But it can not be avoided.”
“I fancy not,” she replied. “Won’t you be seated? You won’t mind the curtains being down, I hope. I’m afraid I’m not looking my best after this terrible shock.”
“I have already talked with your daughter,” continued Duff, moving a chair as close to the couch as he dared, “so I shan’t be here more than a moment. If there is anything you can tell me about this affair, I assure you that it is very important you should do so. Your knowledge of the past is, of course, a trifle more extensive than that of Miss Pamela. Had your father any enemy?”
“Poor father,” the woman said. “Pamela, the smelling salts.” The girl produced a green bottle. “He was a saint, Mr. - er - what did you say his name was, my dear?”
“Mr. Duff, Mother.”
“My father was a saint on earth if ever there was one. Not an enemy in the world. Really, I never heard of anything so senseless in all my life.”
“But there must be sense in it somewhere, Mrs. Potter. It is for us to find out. Something in your father’s past -” Duff paused, and took from his pocket a wash leather bag. “I wonder if we might have that curtain up just a little way?” he added to the girl.
“Certainly,” she said, and raised it.
“I’m sure I look a fright,” protested the woman.
Duff held out the bag. “See, Madam - we found this on the bed beside your father.”
“What in the world is it?”
“A simple little bag, Mrs. Potter, of wash leather - chamois, I believe you call it.” He poured some of the contents into the palm of his hand. “It was filled with a hundred or more pebbles, or small stones. Do they mean anything to you?”
“Certainly not. What do they mean to you?”
“Nothing, unfortunately. But - think, please, Mrs. Potter. Your father was never, for example, engaged in mining?”
“If he was, I never heard of it.”
“These pebbles could have no connection with automobiles?”
“How could they? Pamela - this - pillow -“
“I’ll fix it, Mother.”
Duff sighed, and returned the bag to his pocket. “You did not mingle, on the boat, with the other members of the travel party?”
“I never left my cabin,” the woman said. “Pamela here was constantly wandering about. Talking with all sorts of people, when she should have been with me.”
The detective took out the fragment of watch-chain, with the key attached. He handed it to the girl. “You did not, I suppose, happen to notice that chain on any one with whom you talked?”
She examined it, and shook her head. “No. Who looks at a man’s watch-chain?”
“The key means nothing to you?”
“Not a thing. I’m sorry.”
“Please show it to your mother. Have you ever seen that chain or key before, Madam?”
The woman shrugged. “No, I haven’t. The world is full of keys. You’ll never get anywhere that way.”
Duff restored this clue to his pocket and stood up. “That is all, I fancy,” he remarked.
“The whole affair is utterly senseless, I tell you,” the woman said complainingly. “There is no meaning to it. I hope you get to the bottom of it, but I don’t believe you ever will.”
“I shall try, at any
rate,” Duff assured her. And he went out, conscious of having met a vain and very shallow woman, The girl followed him into the hall.
“I thought it would be better for you to see mother,” she said. “So you might understand that I happen to be spokesman for the family, sort of in charge, if you care to put it that way. Poor mother has never been strong.”
“I understand,” Duff answered. “I shall try not to trouble her again. It’s you and I together, Miss Pamela.”
“For grandfather’s sake,” she nodded gravely.
Duff returned to room 28. His two assistants were waiting, their paraphernalia packed.
“All finished, Mr. Duff,” the fingerprint man told him. “And very little, I fear, sir. This, however, is rather odd.” He handed to the inspector the earphone of the dead man.
Duff took it. “What about this?”
“Not a print on it,” the other said. “Not even that of the man on the bed. Wiped clean.”
Duff stared at the instrument. “Wiped clean, eh? I wonder now. If the old gentleman and his earphone were in some other part of the hotel - if he was killed there, and then moved back here - and the earphone was carried back to -“
“I’m afraid I don’t follow you, sir,” the assistant remarked.
Duff smiled: “I was only thinking aloud. Come on, boys. We must be getting along.” He returned the earphone to the table.
Though he did not suspect it at the moment, he had just held in his hand the key to his mystery. It had been Hugh Morris Drake’s deafness that led to his murder in Broome’s Hotel.
Chapter V
LUNCHEON AT THE MONICO
When they reached the ground floor, Duff directed his two assistants to return to the Yard at once with their findings, and then send the chauffeur back with the green car to await his own departure from Broome’s. He began a round of the corridors, and came presently upon Doctor Lofton, who still had an upset and worried air.
“The other five members of the party are here,” the doctor announced. “I’ve got them waiting in that same parlor. I hope you can see them now, as they are rather restless.”
“At once,” answered Duff amiably, and together with Lofton, entered the familiar room.
“You people know what has happened,” the conductor said. “This is Inspector Duff, of Scotland Yard. He wants to talk with you. Inspector, Mr. and Mrs. Elmer Benbow, Mr. and Mrs. Max Minchin and Mrs. Latimer Luce.”
The inspector stood regarding this oddly assorted group. Funny lot, these Americans, he was thinking: all types, all races, all classes of society, traveling together in apparent peace and amity. Well, that was the melting-pot for you. He was reaching for his notebook when the man named Elmer Benbow rushed up and pumped enthusiastically at his hand.
“Pleased to meet you, Inspector,” he cried. “Say, this will be something to tell when we get back to Akron. Mixed up in a murder - Scotland Yard and all that - just like I’ve been reading about in your English mystery novels. I read a lot of ‘em. My wife tells me they won’t improve my mind, but when I get home from the factory every night, I’m just about done up, and I don’t want any of the heavy stuff -“
“Really?” broke in Duff. “Now, just a moment, Mr. Benbow.” Benbow waited, his flow of talk momentarily checked. He was a plump, genial soul; the naive, unsophisticated sort the British so love to think of as a typical American. In his hand he carried a motion-picture camera. “What was the name of that place you expect to return to one day?” Duff asked.
“Akron. You’ve heard of Akron, haven’t you? Akron, Ohio.”
“I have now,” Duff smiled. “On a pleasure trip, I presume?”
“Sure. Been talking about it for years. Business wasn’t so good this winter, and my partner he says to me: ‘Elmer, why don’t you dig down into the old sock and take that trip around the world you’ve been boring me with for the past five years? That is,’ he says, ‘if there’s anything in the sock after this Wall Street crash.’ Well, there was plenty, for I’m no speculator. Good safe investment - that’s my motto. I wasn’t afraid to spend the money, because I knew that business was fundamentally sound and would turn the corner in time. I look for a return to normalcy - Harding came from Ohio, too - about the time we get back to Akron. You take the rediscount rate -“
Duff glanced at his watch. “I got you here, Mr. Benbow, to ask if you could throw any light on that unfortunate affair in room 28?”
“Unfortunate is right,” Benbow replied. “You said it. As nice an old gentleman as you’d want to meet. One of the big men of the country, rich as all get out, and somebody goes and murders him. I tell you, it’s a slap at American institutions -“
“You know nothing about it?”
“I didn’t do it, if that’s what you mean. We make too many tires in Akron to go round killing off our best customers, the automibile men. No, sir, this is all a big mystery to Nettie and me. You’ve met the wife?”
The detective bowed in the direction of Mrs. Benbow, a handsome, well-dressed woman who, not being needed at the factory, had evidently had more time for the refinements of life than had her husband.
“A great pleasure,” he said. “I take it that you have been out this morning for a walk about London?”
Mr. Benbow held up the camera. “Wanted to get a few more shots on the good old film,” he explained. “But say - the fog was terrible. I don’t know how some of these pictures will turn out. It’s my hobby, you might say. When I get back from this tour I expect to have enough movies to make a fool of contract bridge at our house for months to come. And that will be O.K. with me.”
“So you spent the morning taking pictures?”
“I sure did. The sun came out a while ago, and then I really went to it. Nettie, she says to me: ‘Elmer, we’ll be late for that train,’ so I finally tore myself away. I was out of film by that time, anyhow.”
Duff sat studying his notes. “This Akron,” he remarked. “Is it near a town called” - he flipped the pages of his notebook - “is it near Canton, Ohio?”
“Just a few miles between ‘em,” Benbow answered. “McKinley came from Canton, you know. Mother of presidents - that’s what we call Ohio.”
“Indeed,” murmured Duff. He turned to Mrs. Latimer Luce, a keen-eyed old woman of indefinite age and cultivated bearing. “Mrs. Luce, have you anything to tell me about this murder?”
“I’m sorry, Inspector,” she replied, “but I can tell you nothing.” Her voice was low and pleasing. “I’ve been traveling most of my life, but this is a new experience.”
“Where is your home?”
“Well - Pasadena, California - if I have one. I keep a house there, but I’m never in it. I’m always on the go. At my age, it gives one something to think about. New scenes, new faces. I’m so shocked over this Drake affair. A charming man.”
“You’ve been out of the hotel this morning?”
“Yes - I breakfasted with an old friend in Curzon Street. An English woman I knew when I lived in Shanghai, some twenty years ago.”
Duff’s eyes were on Mr. Max Minchin, and they lighted with interest. Mr. Minchin was a dark stocky man with close-cropped hair and a protruding lower lip. He had shown no such enthusiasm as had Mr. Benbow at meeting a man from Scotland Yard. In fact, his manner was sullen, almost hostile.
“Where is your home, Mr. Minchin?” Duff inquired.
“What’s that got to do with the case?” Minchin inquired. With one hairy hand he fingered a big diamond in his tie.
“Oh, tell him, Maxy,” said his wife, who overflowed a red plush chair. “It ain’t nothing to be ashamed of, I guess.” She looked at Duff. “We’re from Chicago,” she explained.
“Well, Chicago, it is,” her husband remarked harshly. “And what of it, hey?”
“Have you any information about this murder?”
“I ain’t no dick,” said Maxy. “Do I look it? Dig up your own info. Me - I got nothing to say. My lawyers - well, they ain’t here. I ain’t talking
. See what I mean?”
Duff glanced at Doctor Lofton. Some queer characters had certainly crept into Lofton’s Round the World Tour this year. The doctor looked the other way obviously embarrassed.
Mrs. Minchin also appeared rather uncomfortable. “Come on, Maxy,” she protested. “There’s no use nursing a grouch. Nobody’s accusing you.”
“Patrol your own beat,” he said. “I’ll handle this.”
“What have you been doing this morning?” Duff inquired.
“Buying,” answered Minchin tersely.
“Look at that sparkler.” Sadie held out a fat hand. “I seen it in a window, and I says to Maxy - if you want me to remember London, that’s what I remember it by. And he come across, Maxy did. A free spender - ask the boys in Chicago -“
Duff sighed, and stood up. “I won’t detain you any longer,” he remarked to the little group. He explained again that no one must leave Broome’s Hotel, and the five went out. Lofton turned to him.
“What’s to be the outcome of this, Mr. Duff?” he wanted to know. “My tour is on schedule, of course, and a delay is going to tangle things frightfully. Boats, you understand. Boats all along the line, Naples, Port Said, Calcutta, Singapore. Have you any information that will entitle you to hold any of my party here? If so, hold them, and let the rest of us go on.”
A puzzled frown was on Duff’s usually serene face. “I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “I’ve never encountered a situation like this before. For the moment, I’m not quite certain about my future course of action. I must consult my superiors at the Yard. There’ll be a coroner’s inquest in the morning, which will no doubt be adjourned for a few weeks.”
“A few weeks!” cried Lofton, in dismay.
“I’m sorry. I’ll work as fast as I can, but I may tell you that until I’ve solved this thing, I’ll be very reluctant to see your tour resume.”
Lofton shrugged. “We shall see about that,” he remarked.
“No doubt,” Duff answered, and they parted.
Mark Kennaway was waiting in the hallway. “May I see you a moment, Inspector?” he said. They sat down on a nearby bench.
Charlie Chan [5] Charlie Chan Carries On Page 5
