“Perhaps I had better not tell you. It may shock you to hear. I think you know him.”
“Nothing can shock me now, after that horrible journey. Who do they think it is?”
“A Mr. Sykes, a banker from Liverpool.”
She received the news so impassively, with such strange composure, that for a moment he was disappointed in her. But then, quick to excuse, he suggested, “You may have already heard?”
“Yes. The police at the railway station told me they thought it was Mr. Sykes.”
“But you knew him?”
“Certainly. He was my banker, much to my sorrow. I shall lose heavily by the bank’s failure.”
“That also has reached you, then?” interrupted the lord, somewhat uneasily.
“Sure. He told me of it himself. He came to me the day I was leaving Liverpool and made me an offer.”
“To share his fortunes?”
“Lord Henderson! How can you? Marry that man!” The look in her eyes was enough to set him straight about her feelings for him.
“I had heard, well, someone said that…”
“Speak out, Sir. I shall not be offended. It is perfectly true that the man once presumed to pester me with his attentions, but I gave him no reason to continue.”
There was a pause. The lord felt he could ask no questions. Anything more had to come from the baroness herself.
“Let me tell you what his offer was,” she continued, at last. “I don’t know why I listened to it. I ought to have immediately informed the police. I wish I had.”
“It might have saved him from his fate.”
“Every villain gets his just deserts in the long run,” she said, with bitterness. “And Mr. Sykes… But wait, you shall know him better. He came to me to propose that he, I mean secretly, would repay me the amount of my deposit, all the money I have in the world. To join in his fraud, in fact.”
“The scoundrel! On my word, he has been well served. And that was the last you saw of him?”
“I saw him on the journey, in Leicester, in the dining compartment and at… Oh, Mr. Henderson, please don’t ask me any more about him!” she cried, with a sudden outburst. “I cannot tell you…I’m obliged to keep…”
“Then do not say another word,” he said, promptly.
“There are other things, but my lips must remain sealed for the present. You do not… Please don’t think any worse of me.”
She laid her hand gently on his arm and his closed over it with such evident warmth that a blush reddened her face.
“As if anything could make me do that! Come what may, I shall trust you, believe in you, think well of you, always.”
“How sweet of you to say that! Now, of all times,” she murmured softly and looking up her eyes met his eyes.
Her hand was still on his arm, covered by his and she moved closer to him. It was natural for him to put his other arm around her waist and draw her to him.
“Madam, may I say one word more?” he whispered in her ear. “Will you give me the right to shelter and protect you, to stand by you, share your troubles or keep them from you?”
“No, not now!” She looked up, tears brimming up in her bright eyes. “I cannot, will not accept this sacrifice. You are only speaking out from your heart. You must not involve yourself with me, not now.”
He stopped her protests by the oldest and most effective method known in such cases, a kiss. After that there was no more hesitation. She accepted his love as he had offered it, freely, with whole heart and soul. And when he embraced her, she crept up under his sheltering arms like a storm-beaten dove re-entering the nest.
They sat there, hand locked in hand, saying little, satisfied to be with each other. Time flew by far too fast, till at last Lord Henderson, with a laugh, suggested, “Do you know, dearest Baroness…”
She corrected him in a soft, low voice.
“My name is Roxanne, Barry.”
“Roxanne, darling. It is very cold-hearted of me, perhaps, but I’m a soldier and an army marches on its stomach. Do you know that I’m nearly starved? I have had no breakfast.”
“Nor have I,” she answered, smiling. “I was thinking of it when you appeared like a whirlwind.”
“Are you sorry, Roxanne?” She made a pretty gesture of closing his traitor lips with her small hand.
“Not for the world.”
“You are irresistible,” he said and kissed her. “Let us go out to lunch somewhere.”
“I suppose they will not try to stop us?”
“Who should try?” he asked.
“The people of the hotel. I don’t quite understand that manager. He has been up to see me several times and he spoke rather oddly, rather rudely to me.”
“Then he shall answer for it,” snorted Lord Henderson, hotly. “It is the fault of that brute of a policeman, I suppose.”
“Policeman? Here? Are you sure?”
“Perfectly sure. It is one of those from Waterloo Station. I recognized him directly and he was interfering. Why, I caught him trying... That reminds me, I rescued this letter from his clutches.”
He took the little envelope from his breast pocket and handed it to her, kissing the tips of her fingers as she took it from him.
“Ah!” she said, dismayed, when, after rather carelessly tearing the envelope open, she had glanced at it.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “May I not know?”
She made no offer to give him the letter and said in a faltering voice, “I don’t know. I don’t want to withhold anything from you. And yet, this is a matter, which concerns me only. I ought not to drag you into it.”
“What concerns you is very much my concern, too. Still, I do not wish to force your confidence.”
She gave him the letter with a little sigh of relief. He read it, but did not understand it in the least.
“I must see you. You will find Coleen here. She is giving me trouble. You only can deal with her. Do not delay. Come immediately or we must come to you. Stewart, Hotel Callenberg, Fleet Street.”
“What does this mean? Who is Stewart?” asked Lord Henderson, rather brusquely.
“He…he…oh, Barry, I have to go. Anything is better than his coming here.”
“Stewart? Haven’t I heard the name? Was he not one of the passengers in the sleeper? Am I not right? Please tell me, am I not right?”
“Yes, yes. He was there with the rest of us. He sat near the door.”
“Ah, yes, now I remember him. But what in Heaven’s name has he to do with you? How dare he send you such an insolent message as this? Surely, Roxanne, you will tell me? You will admit that I have a right to ask?”
“Yes, of course. I will tell you, Barry, everything. But not here, not now. It must be on the way. I have been very foolish, but, oh, come, come, let us be going. I’m so afraid he might…”
“Then I may go with you?”
“I much prefer it, much. But do let us make haste!”
She snatched up her coat and held it to him prettily, that he might help her into it, which he did neatly.
“And this Coleen? That is your maid, correct? Didn’t she disappear from the train? Why is she with that fellow? Upon my soul, I don’t understand anything, not a little bit.”
“I can’t explain that, either. It is strange, but we shall soon know. Please, Barry, please do not get impatient.”
They walked together down into the lobby and past the clerk’s desk into the street. On seeing them, he came out hastily and placed himself in front, quite plainly barring their way.
“Oh, Madam, one moment,” he said in a tone that was by no means friendly. “The manager wants to speak to you. He told me to tell you and stop you if you went out.”
“The manager can speak to the lady when she returns,” interjected the lord angrily, answering for the baroness.
“I have my orders and I cannot allow her…”
“Stand aside, you scoundrel!” cried the lord. “Or upon my soul I shall give you such
a lesson, which will make you sorry you were ever born.”
At this moment the manager himself appeared and the clerk turned to him for protection and support.
“I was merely giving the lady your message, Mr. Keefe, when this gentleman threatened me.”
“Oh, surely not. It must be some mistake,” the manager said most suavely. “But I did wish to speak to the lady. I wished to ask her whether she was satisfied with her rooms. I find that the rooms she asked for have fallen vacant. Perhaps Madam would like to look at them and move?”
“Thank you, Mr. Keefe, you are very kind. I’m very much pressed for time just now. When I return in an hour or two, not now.”
The manager was profuse in his apologies and made no further difficulty.
“Oh, as you please, Madam. Later, when you choose.”
The desired result had been obtained. Sergeant Jones appeared, no doubt in reply to some secret signal and the policeman with a short nod had evidently given his approval.
A cab was called and Lord Henderson, having put the baroness in, was turning to give the driver his instructions, when fresh complications arose. Someone coming round the corner had caught a glimpse of the lady disappearing into the cab and cried out from afar.
“Stop! I want to speak to the lady. Stop her.” It was the sharp voice of Inspector Watkins.
“No, no, don’t let them arrest me,” she whispered in urgent appeal.
It was not lost on her devoted friend.
“Go on!” he shouted to the cabdriver, with all the insistence of one trained to give orders. “Forward! As fast as you can drive. I’ll pay you double fare. Tell him, where to go, Roxanne. I’ll follow in less than no time.”
The cab rattled off at top speed and the lord turned to confront Inspector Watkins. The inspector was white to the lips with rage.
“Quick! After her!” screamed the inspector at Sergeant Jones. “Seize her, wherever you find her.”
Sergeant Jones stepped into his car and began his pursuit. The inspector turned on Lord Henderson.
“Now it is between us,” he said, fiercely. “You must account to me for what you have done.”
“Must I?” answered the lord, mockingly. “It is perfectly easy. Madam was in a hurry, so I helped her into the cab. That was all.”
“You have impeded the arrest of that woman. It is not the first time, but now you must answer for it.”
“Dear me!” said the lord in the same flippant tone.
“Come with me, now.”
“And if it does not suit me to go?”
“I will have you carried there, bound and tied hand and foot.”
“Oho, you talk very big, sir. Perhaps you will be so obliging as to tell me what I have done.”
“You have helped a wanted criminal to escape from justice.”
“That lady? A criminal?”
“She is charged with the murder of the man on the train.”
“You must be quite drunk to hint at such a thing. A lady of the highest respectability, a common murderer? Impossible!”
“I do not say she struck the blow, but she organized it, leaving her accomplices to do the actual deed.”
“Accomplices?”
“That man Stewart, your fellow traveller. And her maid, Coleen Loasby, who went missing this morning.”
The lord was dumbfounded at this unexpected blow. Half an hour ago he would have indignantly rejected the very thought that even hinted at suspicion of Roxanne Bluemayne. The letter, however, signed Stewart, the maid’s name and the suggestion that she was troublesome, the threat that if the baroness did not go, they would come to her, all this implied the existence of some secret understanding between her and the others.
His hesitation did not escape so shrewd an observer as Inspector Watkins, who promptly tried to turn it to good use.
“Come, Mr. Henderson,” he said, with assumed friendliness, “I can see how it is with you and you have my sincere sympathy. But believe me I’m justified in saying that our case is strong against her. It’s not mere suspicion, but supported by facts. Now, sir, tell us frankly where that lady has gone and help us to lay our hands on her.”
“Your own people will do that. I heard you order that man to follow her.”
“I would much rather have the information from you.”
“I certainly shall not give it you,” said the lord, hotly. “Anything I know about or have heard from Baroness Bluemayne is sacred to me. I believe in her and nothing you have said has shaken me.”
“Then I must ask you to accompany me to Waterloo Station. You will come, I trust, on my invitation.” The inspector spoke quietly, but with considerable dignity.
“Meaning that if I do not…”
“That will be quite unnecessary, I’m sure.”
“I will go where you like, only I will tell you nothing, not a single word and before I go, I must let my friends at the barracks know, where to find me.”
“Oh, with all my heart,” said the inspector, shrugging his shoulders.
The lord soon found that this time it was different. He could end up being court marshalled and lose his officer’s commission. He did not like it at all. Prudence, however, won and after a struggle he decided to submit, lest worse might befall him.
It was irksome to be in the power of this now domineering inspector on his own ground and eager to show his power. It was with anger that Lord Henderson obeyed the curt orders he received, to leave the police car, to enter at a side door of the railway station, to follow him along the long vaulted passages of this rambling building, up and down many flights of stone stairs, to halt obediently at the waiting room.
“It is here!” said Inspector Watkins.
A policeman was seated at a small table eating lunch. He rose immediately at the sight of Inspector Watkins without speaking.
“Gugel,” said the inspector, shortly, “I will leave this gentleman with you. Make him at home.” The words were spoken in irony. “When I call you, bring him immediately to the interrogation room.” He turned to the lord. “And you, sir, you will oblige me by staying here.”
Lord Henderson nodded carelessly, took the first chair he saw and sat down. He was to all intents and purposes in custody and he examined his jailer at first angrily then curiously, struck by his rather strange appearance. Gugel, as the inspector had called him, was a short man with a huge head sunk in low between a pair of enormous shoulders, revealing his great physical strength. He stood on very thin bow legs. He was a man of few words and those not the most polite in tone, for when the lord began with a remark about the weather, Mr. Gugel replied, “I wish not to talk.” When Lord Henderson pulled out his cigarette-case, as he did automatically when in a situation of annoyance, Gugel raised his hand and grunted, “Not allowed.”
“Then I’ll be hanged if I don’t smoke in spite of every policeman in London!” cried the lord, angrily, rising from his seat and speaking unconsciously in his native Yorkshire dialect.
“What’s that?” asked Gugel, roughly.
He was one of the inspector’s men at Scotland Yard and was only doing his duty according to how he saw it and he said so with such an injured air that the lord was pacified, laughed and relapsed into silence without lighting his cigarette.
The time ran on, from minutes into nearly an hour, a very trying wait for Lord Henderson. All the time he was worrying himself about the baroness, wondering first how she had fared then where she was just then and lastly and longest, whether it was possible for her to be mixed up in anything criminal.
Suddenly the door opened and Gugel stood up. It was Inspector Watkins. He held open the door and said, curtly, “Come.”
When the lord was at last ushered into the interrogation room as the inspector had called it, he heard detective Poiret tell his friend Captain Haven, “Non, mon ami, it is Poiret, who will keep the tickets. He does not wish to miss the third train of the day too.”
Haven looked offended and replied, “I say, Poiret,
it was you who wished to go to that restaurant. There is a fish and chips shop right here at the station.”
“The fish and chips in the railway station? Poiret, he is not attempting the suicide.”
To Lord Henderson’s satisfaction he also saw Colonel Brooks was there. The two soldiers exchanged greetings. The inspector was the first to speak and in apology.
“You will, I trust, pardon us, Mr. Henderson, for having detained you here so long. But there have been developments and we are now willing to let you go free.”
“They have caught the lady you helped to escape,” blurted out Haven, unable to resist making the point.
“The baroness? Is she here, in custody? Never!”
“She is in custody and in very close custody too,” went on Inspector Watkins, gleefully.
“Surely not that? Marty, Colonel, sir, I beg of you, implore you, insist, that you do something for the lady.”
“But, sir, how can I? You must not ask impossibilities. Baroness Bluemayne is under arrest for complicity in murder.”
“I don’t believe it!” cried the lord, indignantly. “Not from these chaps, a pack of idiots, always on the wrong tack! I don’t believe a word, not if they swear.”
“But they have evidence of the most damaging kind against her.”
“Where? How?”
“The inspector has been showing me a notebook,” and the lord’s eyes, following Marty Brooks’s, were directed to a small diary, which the inspector tapped significantly with his finger.
Then Watkins said blandly, “I understand your protest, Mr. Henderson, against that lady’s arrest.” He held up the notebook. “Do you know what this is? Have you ever seen it before?”
“I am dimly conscious of it and yet I cannot say when or where.”
“It is the property of one of your fellow travellers, a Welshman named Stewart.”
“Stewart?” said the Lord, remembering with some uneasiness that he had seen the name at the bottom of the baroness’s letter. “Ah! Now I understand.”
“You have heard of the name, Monsieur? In what connection?” asked Poiret, a little carelessly, but it was a planned pitfall.
“I now understand,” replied the lord, perfectly on his guard, “why the notebook was familiar to me. I had seen it in that man’s hands in the waiting room. He was writing in it.”
Murder on the Liverpool Express (A Jules Poiret Mystery Book 17) Page 8
