by Molly Thynne
He made an expressive gesture with his hand.
“You think there’s nothing in her story?”
“I’d give a great deal to believe there was,” said Shand frankly. “I’m pretty sure that the Argentino’s as crooked as they make ’em, and there’s a good deal about his connection with Lady Dalberry that I don’t like, but I can find nothing against him. And I’m inclined to accept his story that he was in his flat at the Escatorial at the time the murder was committed.”
“You’ve been into that thoroughly, I suppose?”
“We’ve ascertained that he went straight to his flat after dinner, and no one saw him either go out or come in from then on. He can’t actually prove an alibi, naturally, as he was alone in the flat, but there are too many people in that hall for him to have got in and out undetected.”
“Miss Summers made a rather pertinent suggestion,” said Mellish thoughtfully. “He might have been watching on the stairs until the coast was clear. I had a look at them myself, and it would be quite possible, if one stood just round the angle of the first bend. It gives a clear view of the hall, too. And the stairs are very little used, I understand.”
“He’d have to get back,” was Shand’s doubtful rejoinder. “Frankly, I don’t see how he would do it. You can’t see into the hall without going right up the front steps, and any one doing that would be seen to a certainty.”
“All the same, it might be worth while to ascertain whether the hall was left empty at any time during the evening.”
“It was,” Shand admitted. “Between nine and nine-thirty the night-porter went over to the post with some letters belonging to the tenants. On the way back he stopped to speak to one of the porters from the flats opposite. He thinks he was gone about fifteen minutes. Just after he left one of the tenants arrived with some small luggage, and the lift-boy took him up to his flat and had to help with the bags. He remembers the time because he was annoyed at having to do it single-handed in the porter’s absence. The other boys were at supper.”
“Then, so far as we know, the hall was actually deserted for about fifteen minutes during the evening.”
“It was, and, as you say, our man might have got out, but that does not explain how he got in. The porter was sitting by the fire in the hall from then onwards till he went on to the steps and saw the taxi drive up at about eleven-thirty. And de Silva was undoubtedly in his flat when I called.”
Mellish heaved a sigh and got to his feet.
“It seems a bit of a deadlock. I should like to see that lady, though. You might give me her name and address. No objection to my having a chat with her, I suppose?”
“None whatever, Mr. Mellish,” Shand assured him. “And if you can get anything out of her except vague accusations, I shall be grateful. Mrs. Roma Verrall she calls herself.”
He consulted an index card lying at his elbow and wrote the name and address on a bit of paper.
Mellish tucked it into his pocket-book.
“Thanks,” he said. “Any further developments?”
“There’s this,” answered Shand. “We’ve been through the dead man’s effects and discovered a telegram, making an appointment at the Corner House, Piccadilly, at ten o’clock on the night of the murder. He was coming from that appointment when he was killed.”
“No chance of tracing the sender of the telegram, I suppose?”
“It was sent from a small office in West Kensington, and, by sheer luck, the clerk remembers the man who handed it in. She describes him as slight and fair, with a perceptible foreign accent. It’s getting monotonous.”
He gave vent to a short laugh that made Mellish look up quickly.
“In what way?”
“The man who, I’m convinced, was responsible for the death of Smith on board the Enriqueta was described by the steward as ‘on the thin side, of medium height, with hair so fair that it might have been white.’ Piper’s description of Strelinski, the man he declares was an associate of Smith’s in Buenos Aires, and who, according to him, sailed about the same time as Smith, was as follows: ‘Fair, middle-sized, with very light hair. Looked like one of those dance-hall lizards.’ The taxi-driver is quite definite about the appearance of the man who got out of his cab on the way to the Escatorial: ‘Slim sort of chap, not too tall, with very light hair, almost white.’ And now there’s this girl at the post office. It all points the same way. If we can lay our hands on this man Strelinski, we shall clear up both murders. Both Smith and Conyers were strangled. It’s the old story of the method repeating itself.”
“I can only say that I hope you’re wrong,” said Mellish heavily, “though I must admit that it sounds convincing enough.”
Shand stared at him in surprise.
“Lady Dalberry was on board the Enriqueta when Smith was killed,” went on Mellish gravely. “And this man Conyers was on his way to the block of flats in which she lives when he met his end. I can see nothing to connect her with either event, but, taking into account her connection with de Silva and all that has happened lately, I tell you frankly, I don’t like it.”
CHAPTER XIV
Mellish drove back to his rooms in a very thoughtful mood. So silent was he that Jervis’s decorous comments on the weather fell on deaf ears, and that faithful adherent was driven to the conclusion that his fears were at last realized and that his master had contracted the chill that, in Jervis’s apprehensive mind, always hung like the sword of Damocles over his head.
“A little hot milk and a drop of cinnamon in it, sir?” he suggested winningly.
Mellish came to himself with a start.
“Good heavens, no!” he exclaimed. “I shall want you to take a letter for me in a minute or two, Jervis.”
“Yes, sir, if you’re sure you’re all right, sir.”
“Of course I’m all right! And I should be obliged if you wouldn’t treat me as if I were in my dotage. If I want any of your disgusting concoctions I’ll ask for them.”
“Very good, sir. I have placed the Tantalus in the study, and there is a kettle on the boil now in the kitchen.”
He withdrew judiciously, just in time.
Mellish sat down and wrote a note to Mrs. Roma Verrall. In it he asked her to call on him at her earliest convenience, hinting that he wished to see her in connection with the death of Conyers, and suggesting eleven o’clock the next morning as an hour at which she would be sure to find him. Then he rang the bell.
Jervis answered it, carrying a small jug of boiling water which he placed ostentatiously on the writing-table.
“I want you to take this letter,” said Mellish. “And, if possible, hand it to the lady yourself. If she is out, leave it in the hands of some one who seems competent to see that she gets it. Say it is important. And take away this object.”
He pointed to the offending jug of hot water.
“Very good, sir,” answered Jervis meekly, and departed with the letter, leaving the hot water still at Mellish’s elbow.
Mellish had dined and had already spent more than two hours browsing happily over a catalogue that had arrived that day from an art dealer in Paris, when Jervis appeared at the door, disapproval written on every line of his usually placid countenance.
“A lady to see you, sir,” he said. “In answer to the letter you sent this evening.”
Mellish pushed the catalogue aside and got on to his feet.
“Show her in,” he said, and stood watching the door with interest.
His visitor came in swiftly, moving with the graceful ease he had noted in her at the Terpsychorean. But whereas, when he first saw her, she was consciously controlling her movements, now the perfect balance of her walk was mechanical and she had the air of one so obsessed by one dominating idea as to be almost unaware of her surroundings. At the supper club, the startling whiteness of her face had been due largely to cosmetics; to-night her pallor was even more pronounced and her eyes more strikingly brilliant, but there was not a trace of make-up on her cheeks and her lip
s showed grey against her ashen skin. Her clothes were still cheaply effective, but they looked as though she had thrown them on blindly, and Mellish, noting their complete unsuitability to the chilly March evening, guessed that, in her abstraction, she had come out without a coat.
He went forward to meet her and took her hand. It was icy, and he felt her fingers jerk and quiver as he held them. Carol had been right when she said that the woman was almost at the end of her tether.
“It was kind of you to come so soon,” he said, and his slow, quiet voice reacted soothingly on her jangled nerves.
As he spoke he drew her to the fire and forced her gently into an armchair.
She sat staring at him, clutching the arms of the chair.
“You said in your letter that it was about Eric,” she said, in a voice that was hardly above a whisper, “so I came.”
“I ought to explain,” answered Mellish, speaking even more slowly than usual. He had a feeling that her brain was hardly capable of taking in extraneous things, so centered was it on one subject. “I happened to meet a friend of mine from New Scotland Yard to-day, and something he told me made me think you could throw some light on this unhappy business. So I ventured to ask you if you would come and see me. I hardly hoped you would act on my letter so promptly. I no longer hold any official position myself, but I think I may promise you that anything you may tell me will receive due consideration at headquarters.”
She made a hopeless gesture.
“I’ve been at them till I’m sick,” she exclaimed passionately, “and they won’t listen!” Her voice, torn with emotion though it was, was not unpleasing, but as she became more vehement, her cockney accent asserted itself. “Even when I told them what he’d said to me with his own lips the night before he was killed, they put me off. I could see they didn’t mean to do anything. And that swine’ll get away with it!”
She stared at Mellish with unseeing eyes.
“After the way I’ve worked for him. Keeping off those beasts that were trying to get him back to his old ways. Fighting for him! And now, all those years gone for nothing and him lying dead!”
She broke down completely and sat huddled in her chair, her face buried in her hands, her shoulders shaking.
Mellish stood and waited quietly till the outburst had spent itself.
“I’m afraid nothing I can say will be of any comfort to you at this moment,” he said at last, “but I should like to assure you of my very real sympathy. If you feel equal to telling me exactly what your suspicions are, and why you hold them, I can promise to go into the matter fully with you. Take your time and let me have the whole thing from the beginning. What makes you think that Conyers meant to go to de Silva’s flat that night?”
“Because he as good as told me so. As much as a week ago he said that he was on to a good thing. That he’d met a man he’d known out in the Argentine and spotted his little game. Those were his words. And he was going to see to it that he made it worth his while to keep his mouth shut. He wouldn’t tell me more, because he knew if it was anything like blackmail I wouldn’t stand for it, but I knew him so well I could always see through him, and I wasn’t such a fool as not to spot a thing like that. I told him to leave the whole thing alone. You see I was frightened. It was always the way. After he’d been running straight for ever so long, and it seemed as if I was beginning to breathe freely at last, something would crop up and it would take all I’d got to hold him back. And there wasn’t an ounce of vice in him! Just weakness and the bad company he’d got into when he was a lad. If they’d only left him alone! I always knew when he was up to something he didn’t want me to know. He’d sort of half tell me things and I’d have to guess the rest. But I’d always get round him in the end. This was the first time he really got away with it.
I wish to God I’d stuck to him a bit more closely that last week!”
“You think he did go so far as to threaten the man?”
“I know it. If he was alive, you might cut my tongue out before I’d so much as whisper, but I’m past caring now. All I want is to see that devil get what he deserves.”
“What makes you think it is this man de Silva?”
“Because of what happened the night the Terpsychorean was raided. Of course the police didn’t hold us, seeing why we were there, and, properly speaking, we should have gone home together after the raid. Instead of which Eric went to the door with me and told me he’d follow later. I didn’t think anything of that, knowing he might have an appointment with one of the inspectors. When he did get home later he told me that story about this man he’d spotted. Said he was going under another name and no one but him knew what his real name was, and that he’d practically agreed to settle up. He said he’d caught him climbing out of the window and that he gave himself away somehow then. He wouldn’t tell me the man’s name, but he did say that he’d got a photo of him in a suitcase he left at his old lodgings, and that if he showed it to this man he’d come over with anything he liked to ask. Well, I didn’t like it and I tried to get him to drop the whole thing, but there was too much money in it and I couldn’t get him to listen. I worried myself sick over it, but he’d got so that if I spoke about it he’d shut up like a clam and I couldn’t do anything.”
“Did he show you this photograph he spoke of?” asked Mellish.
“He hadn’t got it. It’s at some lodgings we stayed in nearly six months ago. I was taken ill, and the doctor sent me to the country for a month. What with my lodgings there and doctor’s bills and all, we were pretty hard up, and one night Eric flitted, without paying the rent. He left a suitcase and a trunk behind, and, though he was always talking of going back and settling up and fetching them, he never did. He was always careless about things like that.”
“Are they still there, do you think?”
“I know they are. I met a friend the other day who lodges there, and she told me the landlady was holding them for the rent.”
“We’ll have a look at that photograph. I still don’t see, however, what makes you connect all this with de Silva.”
“One of the plain-clothes men told me that de Silva had got away through a window at the back and that they’d just missed him. They were pretty sick about it, too. Remembering what Eric had said about spotting the man getting out of a window, I made sure that de Silva was the man. And I know Eric saw him the day after the raid. He let that out when he wasn’t thinking, and then shut up and wouldn’t say any more. But the day he was murdered he told me he was going up that evening to collect what was due to him. I tried to stop him and told him to let well enough alone, but he laughed and said that when I’d seen what he was going to bring home to me that night I’d sing another song. And then he went off, and that was the end.”
She spoke simply, but with an utter hopelessness that was tragic. For her, Mellish realized, it was the end. After all her efforts to keep the man straight she had failed, and, with that failure, had lost all that made life worth living.
“You did your best,” he said gently. “I wish he had listened to you.”
“I don’t know,” she said, in a dull voice. “I can’t stand this climate and I’d been seedy for a long time, and, perhaps, I wasn’t as much on the spot as I should have been. I feel now that I didn’t try hard enough. But it was the money that tempted him. We’d had a bad winter, what with me being ill and everything.”
“You can remember nothing else he said that might give us some clue as to the identity of this man?”
She shook her head.
“As I said, he was very close about the whole thing, because he knew I didn’t like it. But the man was de Silva, you can take my word for it. I tell you I know it. I was sure enough of it before, but when they told me about the cab driving up to the Escatorial like that, I was dead certain. De Silva was the man he spotted at the Terpsychorean that night, and it was de Silva that did him in.”
“You know that de Silva declares he was in his flat all that evening? The polic
e have been into it pretty thoroughly, and he certainly was never seen to go out.”
She looked at him with a hint of humour in her haggard eyes.
“What’s an alibi? If you’ve been to the Yard they’ll have told you that I’ve been in trouble. I’ve made a clean break with the old lot now, but there was a time when I could have got a dozen witnesses to say they’d seen me in any old place. And me never having set a foot in it! If that fellow wanted to get out without being seen, he’d do it. Besides, I don’t say he did it himself. If they get this fair man they’re talking such a lot about, let them find out who paid him! Eric got into that cab to go to de Silva’s, that I’m sure, and he never got there.”
“If what Conyers hinted to you is true, it was certainly to de Silva’s advantage that he didn’t,” said Mellish slowly. “He might conceivably have made an appointment with Conyers and, instead of keeping it himself, have sent this man to meet him and bring him to the flat. Conyers would have gone with him, suspecting nothing. It’s a far-fetched theory, though.”
“It’s plain enough to me,” said the woman wearily. “But I might as well talk to the moon for all the notice any one will take of me. They’ve been ready enough to listen to me at the Yard before now, and I’ve never given them a tip yet that wasn’t straight, and they know it. When they turned me down there I went to de Silva and told him straight what I thought of him. He tried to bluff me all right, with his talk of the police, but when I saw his face I knew. He was scared stiff, for all his talk, and, if he’d dared, I should have gone the way of Eric. Little I’d care!” she finished bitterly.
She rose to her feet with difficulty and stood clutching the mantelpiece, her whole body shaking uncontrollably.
“I’d better go,” she said. “You’re like the rest. I might have known it.”
Mellish faced her squarely.
“You’re wrong there,” he assured her, with a sincerity she could not doubt. “I don’t say that I accept your theory, but I’m quite prepared to consider it. So much so that I’m going to try to put you in the way to prove it. Can you get hold of this photograph you spoke of? I’ll settle whatever is owing to the landlady who is holding the trunks. Does she know you? I mean, would she give up the things to you on receipt of the money?”
