Finger of Fate

by Sapper

  The colour had returned to her cheeks, and she faced Geoffrey steadily.

  “Perfectly right, Mr Sinclair,” she said. “Though how you’ve found out I don’t know.”

  “Don’t let’s worry about that at the moment,” said Geoffrey gravely. “I want to hear why you did this thing.”

  “In the first place I didn’t go to the room to kill him,” she began.

  “Of that I am sure,” agreed Geoffrey.

  “I went to get a paper out of his pocket-book – what it was doesn’t matter.”

  “Excuse me,” he interrupted, “it does matter. This is a very serious affair, Miss Carpenter, and if we are to help you we must know the truth.”

  “Very well,” she said. “I will tell you. I am more or less engaged, as Peter knows, to a man at home, Tony Carruthers – Tony is in Milton Blake’s office. To cut a long story short Tony has been playing the fool over money – the firm’s money – and Milton Blake found it out. Of course he could have sacked him, but Milton Blake wasn’t that sort of man. He forced Tony to sign a confession and armed with that he came out here to present an ultimatum to me.”

  “The damned swine,” I cried, but Geoffrey signed to me to be silent.

  “The ultimatum he gave me,” she continued, “was either prison for Tony, or my marriage to him. In the past I’d looked on him as a friend: since he has been out here this time I’ve got to know him in his true colours. I told him I didn’t love him and never could love him: he said he didn’t care, and that he would chance that. Then last night it suddenly came to me that if I could get the paper, it would at any rate be something. I could prevent Tony signing another and it might be some help. So, just as you described, Mr Sinclair, I went to his room. And I’d just found his pocket book when I felt his arms round me. He” – for a moment she hesitated, then continued in the same steady voice – “he left no doubt as to his intentions. I think perhaps he’d been a little drunk earlier. He kissed me, and went on kissing me though I tried to beat him off: then – then he started forcing me towards the bed. And without thought I picked up the first thing that came to my hand and struck him with it. His grip suddenly relaxed, and he slipped to the floor. For a moment or two I couldn’t make out what had happened: then I realised. I seized the paper, and flew to the door and unbolted it. And that’s all. Except one thing. If Mr de Silvo had been arrested I should have told the police what I’ve told you now.”

  For a while there was silence: then Geoffrey rose and held out his hand.

  “In the event of the police arresting anyone else, Miss Carpenter, it may be necessary for what you have told us to become public. Otherwise I think Peter agrees with me that you have just advanced a remarkably ingenious theory to account for the death of Milton Blake, but one which we do not see our way to accepting. My own belief is that the thing was accidental. Blake was reading late, using the dagger as a paper cutter. He fell asleep and in turning over the dagger penetrated his heart.”

  For a moment she swayed and his steadying arm went round her: then she pulled herself together.

  “It is good of you, Mr Sinclair,” she said quietly. “And you too, Peter.”

  “But there is just one thing you must do, Miss Carpenter,” he told her. “Scrub the wax off the rail of your balcony.”

  “So that was how you spotted it,” I said as we went downstairs.

  “That was the final link, Peter: I’d spotted it before then. At the very first I admit I thought it was de Silvo. The door was open, and after the row last night suspicion naturally fell on him. And then suddenly I saw the one vital thing which you all missed though I alluded to it specifically – the switch for the door bolt. The bolt was unfastened, but the switch was set for the bolt to be fastened. I at once tried the switch and found that it worked perfectly, and the immense significance of the point struck me at once. Of course, you see it yourself now.”

  “I may be dense, old boy,” I confessed, “but I can’t say I do.”

  “With those little bolts,” he explained, “the current is very small. And though they shut and open as actuated by the switch, it is perfectly simple to shut and open them by hand. That is to say, that even if the switch points to shut, you can move the bolt by hand to open. Which was exactly the state of things in Blake’s room. Now was it even remotely likely that Blake having bolted his door by the switch, then got up and unbolted it by hand?

  “Frankly it didn’t seem so to me. And once that was granted it altered everything, because it proved conclusively that the person who had killed Blake had not come in through the door. Therefore entry had been through the window.

  “I’d advanced so far when de Silvo appeared on the scene, and any lingering doubts I might have had as to his innocence were dispelled. The mere fact that he was in evening clothes and admitted not having been to bed was enough to acquit him. No man could be such a complete half-wit as that if he had done it.

  “So back I went to the window, and then came the next difficulty. As I said upstairs, jumping would have been too great a risk – so how had access been obtained to Blake’s balcony? That was the link that was missing, and a damned important one it was. That it was done with the knowledge of either Miss Carpenter or Mrs Denton was clear. But how?

  “Mrs Denton I had dismissed from my mind – she is one of those people one would always dismiss from everything. But Beryl Carpenter was a very different proposition. That there had been something in the wind between them ever since he arrived was obvious to us all. What was it? Now we know: then I didn’t. Moreover, Beryl Carpenter was a girl with a head like ice, and nerve above the average. So that in my own mind I was already convinced that she knew a great deal more about the matter than she said.

  “Then we went up to Blake’s room again, and I saw marks on the balcony railing. I scratched them with my nail and found they were wax. And like a flash her remark came back to me – ‘I was waxing my skis till about midnight.’

  “Normally of course the wax wouldn’t have come off; but the skis weren’t being used normally. Her weight on them as she crossed the gap made them bend up and down and consequently rub against the wood of the railing. Also the wax had just been put on.

  “And that I think is all, Peter. It just shows the vital importance of tiny points of detail. Because had the door bolt been opened by using the switch near the bed, it could never have been found out.”

  “I hope to heaven it never will be,” I said fervently.

  “Not if I can help it,” he answered. “She’s a great girl – that. In fact I am now going to begin the rumour of it having been an accident. The stout Swiss official will probably jump at it.”

  WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOUR?

  Jimmy Sefton sat outside the Angler’s Rest at Drayminster with a puzzled look on his good-natured freckled face. On the table by his side was a tankard of ale, and an opened packet of Virginian cigarettes. It was five o’clock in the afternoon, and save for him the place was deserted. Soon it would fill up, when the mystic hour arrived which allowed unfortunate mortals who were not staying in the house to get a drink, but until then he would have the place to himself – a fact for which he was thankful. He wanted to think.

  No one would have called Jimmy a brainy young man, but he had a certain shrewd common sense which often serves better than a quicker and cleverer brain. He might take longer in arriving at a conclusion, but when he did get there he was generally fairly near the mark. And now he once again proceeded to run over the chain of events that was directly responsible for his presence in Drayminster.

  The first had been a dinner at the “Cheshire Cheese” some three weeks previously. At it were present Teddie Morgan and Bob Durrant, two journalistic pals of his, though Teddie Morgan, to be correct, was more than a pal. He and Jimmy had been at school together, and they had joined the staff of the Daily Leader at the same time. And that was five years ago – five years during which acquaintanceship had grown into real friendship. The fourth member of t
he party was a man called Spencer, who was more or less the stranger at the board. He, too, was a writing man, but his speciality was crime. And the principal interest he had for the other three was an intimate knowledge of Scotland Yard, an institution with which they had only a bowing acquaintance.

  He could recall quite clearly the gist of Spencer’s remarks. Dinner was over, coffee and port were on the table. And he could still see Spencer’s thin aquiline features through the thick haze of tobacco smoke, as he recounted some of the cases he had had first hand knowledge of.

  “You may take it from me,” he said, “that there is not much wrong with our police system. It is the custom of lots of people to deride them as men of small brains and large feet, but nothing is farther from the truth. The local village constable may not be a particularly bright specimen, but for the matter of that the local French gendarme is not a second Newton as a general rule. And there’s another thing too which lots of people are apt to forget – the difference between our legal code and those of other countries. With us the onus of proving a man guilty lies on the police: in France, for instance, the onus lies on the man proving himself not guilty. And the difference is enormous. There are half a dozen men at large in London today whom the police know to be criminals. But they can’t arrest them because they can’t prove it. In France they would be under lock and key in no time, and it would be up to them to prove that they weren’t.”

  Spencer had talked on in this strain for some time, and then had come the information which had proved the first link in the chain of events that had since taken place.

  “But they are up against it at the moment,” he had said thoughtfully, “up against it good and strong. And have been for some weeks. Forged notes – on a scale never hitherto attempted.”

  His audience had pricked up their ears: this was something better than vague generalisations about police methods.

  “They’re not very chatty about it at the Yard, but I have my own channels of information,” he had continued. “And this is the biggest thing of its kind they have struck yet. The headquarters of the gang are in this country, but they are not dealing with English notes. Which makes it so very much harder to track them. French and Belgian notes of fairly large denomination: American five and ten dollar notes are what they are making. And that is where the complication occurs. You see the usual method of running the headquarters of a gang of this sort to earth is by getting on the line of the men who pass the notes. A fiver, let us say, comes into a bank. That fiver is never again issued, but is destroyed. The bank people find it is a forgery. Scotland Yard then sets to work to trace the movements of that fiver back to the first person who handled it. And thus, if there are several, in time the man who originally passed it is found. From him, they go still farther back, because it is not the passer they want but the utterer – the forger himself. Now in this case there is a very grave difficulty. The forger is in this country: the men who are passing the notes work in other countries. And not only that, they are mixing up the currencies. They are getting rid of American notes in Belgium, we’ll say, and French notes in Italy.”

  “How long has it been going on for?” someone had asked.

  “The Yard has been down to it for about six months now,” was the answer. “And though they won’t admit the fact they are no nearer the solution now than when they started. As I said it is a very big thing. Two or three of the smaller fry have been caught abroad, and though they have been subjected to foreign methods of examination nothing has been found out. Probably because they none of them knew anything to pass on. The only vague clue, which may not even be a clue at all, is that two of these men bought their forged notes in Brighton, and the other at Bognor.”

  “Bought!” Teddie Morgan had cried.

  “That is the usual method,” Spencer had explained. “A thousand franc French note is worth roughly eight pounds. The man buys it – say for five. If he passes it he is three pounds to the good: if he doesn’t he is jugged. But whichever happens the big man is a fiver in pocket. But to go back. The fact that Brighton and Bognor were selected as rendezvous for the transactions points to the possibility of the headquarters being in Sussex. But it is only a possibility.”

  And then Teddie Morgan had laughed.

  “I will attend to the matter,” he had said. “Tomorrow I leave for a well-earned fortnight’s holiday. The earth is mine to roam in: I shall select Sussex. And if anyone offers to sell me thousand franc notes for a fiver, I shall dot him one with a beer mug and summon the police.”

  Thus the first link in the chain. The party had broken up shortly after, and no one had thought any more about it. In fact until three days previously Jimmy Sefton had not known that Morgan had even gone to Sussex. And then had come the second link. It consisted of a picture postcard showing the village of Drayminster. It contained the pointed information that that village had been classified fifth in order of beauty in England. It also contained the following message written in Morgan’s sprawling handwriting:

  “Tell Spencer that there is many a true word spoken in jest.”

  Jimmy had been busy at the time, and having put the card in his pocket had forgotten all about it, until that very morning, when the third grim link appeared in the form of a paragraph in the paper. He took it out of his pocket book now as he sat at his table and reread it for the twentieth time.

  “The body of a well-dressed young man was found in the river Dray yesterday afternoon by two farm labourers. It was discovered in the weeds some three miles from the picturesque old country village of Drayminster, one of the famous beauty spots of England. An empty fishing creel was slung round his shoulder. It is assumed that the unfortunate gentleman, who has been identified as Mr Edward Morgan, a well-known London journalist, and who was staying at the Angler’s Rest, must have slipped in one of the deep and treacherous pools of the river and been drowned. The current then carried the body to the spot where it was found. No trace of his rod has been discovered. The inquest will be held today.”

  And Jimmy Sefton had just returned from that very inquest. No difficulty about identifying the body; it was poor old Teddie right enough. From the medical evidence he had been dead about two days, and the verdict was a foregone conclusion. The landlord of the Angler’s Rest, who had done the identification, had been asked by the Coroner as to whether he had not been a little alarmed when the days had passed by with no sign of his guest.

  “No, sir,” he had answered. “Mr Morgan took the room for a week, and he told me that he might frequently sleep out. He was very fond of walking, and, as the weather was fine, he would very likely get a shake-down in a barn or under a hayrick.”

  Jimmy Sefton, who had explained to the coroner that he was a brother journalist on the same paper, and who was sitting at the back of the room, had listened to this piece of evidence in silent amazement. Not that he disbelieved the landlord – for a more transparently honest and upright man he had seldom seen – but for a very different reason. If there was one form of exercise which Teddie loathed with a superlative loathing, it was walking. He would take a bus to go half the length of Fleet Street rather than walk the distance. So that for some reason or other Teddie had deliberately lied to the worthy man whose naturally cheerful voice could even now be heard, suitably lowered for the occasion, recounting the details of the tragedy for every new arrival at the bar. Why had he lied?

  Then Mr Purley, who sold rods and flies and all the other paraphernalia of the angler’s craft, had identified the deceased as the gentleman who had come to his shop to be completely fitted out four days previously – on Tuesday last. He had admitted he did not know much about it, but having been told of the marvellous trout fishing which could be got in the river Dray he had determined to try his hand at it. To this evidence also, Jimmy Sefton had listened in some surprise. Not, it is true, with that utter bewilderment which the landlord’s story had produced in his mind, but still with considerable doubt. He could not picture Teddie being suddenl
y seized with a desire to become an angler. He knew his tastes – none better. He had loved all games, but except for an occasional ride he had never gone in for what are known as the sports. Shooting and fishing he had had no opportunity to try his hand at. So why this sudden craving to become a fisherman?

  Jimmy Sefton called for another pint of ale.

  “Do you remember,” he asked, “when it was that Mr Morgan told you he might be going on a walking tour?”

  The landlord scratched his head.

  “Let me see, sir,” he said. “Today is Saturday. He was out, I remember, last Sunday night, but took his meals here Monday. And Monday night he was out too. And after that I never saw him again. Perhaps a week ago he told me.”

  “I see,” said Jimmy. “Thank you.”

  The landlord returned to the bar, and Jimmy lit a cigarette. According to Mr Purley it was Tuesday when Teddie had bought his tackle. It was also on Tuesday that he had sent the postcard to Jimmy. So that presumably either on Monday night or on Tuesday morning he had discovered something which had caused him to alter the blind of a walking tour to that of becoming a fisherman. What was it that he had discovered? And where? Was it really as his postcard suggested, that he had by some extraordinary stroke of chance stumbled on the headquarters of the forgers? And if that was so – Jimmy Sefton’s jaw tightened a little at this point in his reflections – if that was so, was the verdict of “Accidentally drowned,” correct? Or had Teddie Morgan been murdered?

  Jimmy was not at all an imaginative young man, and his first impulse was to call himself several sorts of an ass. Murders and gangs of forgers he told himself were part of the stock in trade of the sensational novelist. In fact he used every single argument he could think of to prove to himself that he was wrong. But it was no use: try as he would his mind kept reverting to that one big question. Had Teddie Morgan found out too much and been murdered?