David moved closer to the window in the hope of hearing more, but in this he was frustrated, for the voices became more and more indistinct, and it sounded as though the two had moved farther back into the room.
David stared idly at the gardens below. The sun streamed into the room, and he noticed that the sunblinds were down over practically all the other windows below him. He could see their striped canvas lengths foreshortened as he peered down upon them. The whole hotel seemed to be taking a siesta. The gardens were deserted, and far below, at the foot of the cliffs, he knew that the beach was covered with lazy, supine figures bathing in the afternoon sun.
A heat haze hung over the entire scene.
He was still watching the garden idly, his mind on the drone of tantalizing conversation in the next room. He had seriously thought of moving back the huge wardrobe and listening blatantly at the inner door through which he had once burst so unceremoniously upon the girl. But as this necessitated his making a certain amount of noise he decided that it was a risk he could not take, since it was manifestly important that Sir Leo should not be put on his guard.
He returned again to the window and noticed for the first time that the terrace garden was not deserted. The tall, thin figure of a man in an old-fashioned grey alpaca suit was strolling languidly across the lawn.
David had never accounted himself the possessor of any psychic gift, but the fact remained that, although he had never seen Saxon Marsh before, and now only had a very foreshortened view of him, from the first moment the young inspector set eyes upon that curious stooping figure he became interested in the man.
It was not that he did anything at all suspicious. On the contrary, he walked slowly and apparently without purpose. Yet it was odd how sinister that solitary grey-clad figure managed to appear as he walked slowly over the grass.
He reached the wall, and, as David watched him, his mind still more than half upon the muttered conversation in the next room, stared out to sea.
Some few feet farther along the wall was a huge stone urn filled with scarlet geraniums. There were six urns in all set along the low wall in front of the hotel, but each contained a different variety of flower, and David especially noticed the vivid scarlet flowers standing out clearly against the glittering background of sea far beyond.
As the young detective watched the solitary figure of the tall, elderly man he noticed for the first time that the other did not seem to be well. Although he was much too far away to see the other’s face, he noticed that he reeled and put his hand up to his head as though oppressed by the heat.
Presently he seemed to straighten himself with an effort and to walk on along the narrow path by the side of the wall. His movement was erratic, however, and when at last he came up level with the urn of geraniums he stood reeling. He put out his hand to steady himself and then collapsed, the full force of his weight hitting the top of the urn.
A smothered exclamation escaped the young inspector. It seemed that the man must topple over the low wall onto the promenade some twenty feet below. But this was not to be. With a tremendous effort, quite extraordinary, David thought vaguely, for a man so overcome, he righted himself, but not before the urn itself had clattered over the edge of the wall.
There was a dull crash, and David thought he heard a muffled scream, but thought nothing of it at the time, for at this point his mind was jerked back from the scene outside the window to matters which directly concerned him.
From the room next door he heard a muffled exclamation from the girl; then a sharp angry phrase, the sense of which he could not catch, from Sir Leo; and afterwards, while his senses were keyed up and he stood straining his ears, complete silence for a full minute.
Then there was a crash as the girl’s door slammed violently and the automatic lock shot home.
On noiseless feet David crossed his room and opened his own door the fraction of an inch. He heard thick heavy footsteps hurrying away down the corridor and, opening the door a little wider, made out the stocky figure of Sir Leo hurrying to the lift.
David waited until the coast was clear and then slipped out into the deserted corridor and tapped gently on Judy’s door.
There was no reply, and he tapped again, a little more loudly this time.
Still there was no answer from within, and a sense of bewilderment not untinged with alarm passed over him. With his own ears he had heard Judy talking to Sir Leo, and with his own eyes he had seen the baronet departing alone.
He knocked again, fiercely this time.
There was no movement inside the room, but, listening intently, he thought he heard a faint muffled cry from somewhere within.
David felt suddenly cold.
“Judy!” he called. “Judy!”
This time there was no sound. Panic seized David. The door was heavy and not easy to break in, even had such a course been in any way desirable in the circumstances.
He slipped back into his own room, pulled back the wardrobe and tried the inner door. It was locked. Outside the window there was a considerable amount of commotion, but David was far too absorbed in his own problem to notice it. He examined the catch feverishly, and to his delight saw that it was one of those thumb-spring affairs and of no great strength. He put his shoulder to it and pushed, realizing instinctively that silence was important.
He burst into the other room at last and stared about him. At first glance he thought it was empty. The big, airy room was tidy and bare.
“Judy,” he said hoarsely.
And then his eye fell upon the door of a cupboard built into the wall by the fireplace. In a moment he had reached it and had swept back the bolt.
Judy was inside, Judy with her hands tied behind her and a handkerchief thrust into her mouth.
He pulled her out into the room and released her. His face was grim, and there was a dangerous expression in his lazy blue eyes. The girl took a deep breath.
“Oh, David,” she said. “Oh, my dear, what a blessing you came!”
The young man stood looking down at her. The extraordinary discovery had shaken him more than he realized. She looked so extraordinarily frail and helpless standing there, her honey-coloured curls dishevelled, her face flushed, and her eyes unusually bright.
He put his hands on her shoulders.
“Now,” he said, “what’s the explanation of this? No more beating about the bush, Judy. You’ve got to tell me. Good heavens, if you’d been left in there for any length of time you’d have suffocated. I want the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
The girl avoided his eyes. Instead of looking at him she glanced fearfully at the door behind him.
“Quick, David, there’s no time to lose,” she said. “I can’t tell you anything now, my dear. There’s not time. We’ve got to get right out of here before he comes back. He only put me in there so that I shouldn’t get out and escape. He’ll be back any moment.”
In spite of himself David was impressed by the urgency in her tone. However, he stuck to his point.
“It’s no good, Judy,” he said. “This is the last straw. I’ve got a lot to tell you, but first of all there’s a great deal that you must tell me. Things are bad, Judy, but I’m going to see you through if you’ll only let me.”
He had given himself away completely, and now, as he saw the expression in her eyes, he realized the futility of pretending to himself or to her any longer.
“You know I love you,” he said gravely.
He saw the colour come and vanish in her face. Then her eyes met his, very steady and sincere.
“Yes,” she said. “I know, and I’m glad. I’m afraid I love you too, David. But it’s no good. I’ve got to get out of here at once, before Sir Leo comes back. One day you shall know everything, I promise you, but not now. Oh, please trust me. Help me to get out of here at once.”
Inspector David Blest was not easily put off his purpose as a rule, but, to do him justice, the circumstances were definitely unusual.
The girl was clearly panic-stricken, and after that brief exciting moment when she had admitted her love for him the bewildered David was prepared to do anything in the world for her.
He stepped back across the room, closed the communicating door, and placed a chair across it so that the broken lock might not be immediately obvious to a newcomer.
Meanwhile Judy had combed her hair and snatched up a coat. She rebolted the cupboard door, and then together they slipped out into the corridor.
Judy was almost running, and he was forced to hurry to keep up with her.
“What are you going to do?” he demanded urgently. “I must know, Judy. I insist.”
She turned to him pleadingly, her eyes meeting his.
“Trust me,” she whispered. “Oh please, please, trust me.”
And then, before he could stop her, she had turned and fled, not down the staircase as might have been supposed, but up towards the third floor.
David started after her, but she waved him back, and he saw her face suddenly grey with fear.
“He’s coming,” she said. “He’s coming. Don’t let him catch me, David, please!”
He would have followed her, but at that moment there was a considerable commotion on the floor below, and the sound of excited voices reached him.
The young Scotland Yard man peered over the banisters and looked down upon an excited group of people carrying something carefully up the staircase. From where he stood he had a clear view of the scene. Two sturdy hotel officials, one of them the burly commissionaire, were carrying the swooning figure of a woman. Behind them hovered a man who was obviously a doctor, and surrounding the whole quartet was a crowd of guests, hotel servants, and people who had obviously come in from the promenade.
As the procession rounded the bend, the woman’s face came into David’s line of vision, and he saw to his surprise that it was none other than the beautiful Marguerite Ferney.
David hurried down to meet the crowd, his curiosity thoroughly aroused. The onlookers were only too anxious to tell him what happened.
“Just missed her,” said one little man. “Might have killed her. Smashed her to a pulp. I expect it was the umbrella that broke the fall. It’s shock, really. That’s why we didn’t bring her up by the lift.”
David was still puzzled, and his informant opened his little round eyes in astonishment.
“Why, don’t you know anything about it?” he inquired. “Oh, a nasty accident! Might have killed her.”
They were standing in a corner of the staircase, and the crowd was still pressing past them. The little man was in a quandary, torn between the desire to tell the story and not to lose his place near the casualty.
“It was the flower pot,” he explained. “Great big stone flower pot fell off the hotel wall just by where she was sitting. It smashed one deck chair to atoms. It’s a miracle to me how it happened. There’s going to be a lot of inquiry about this, I can tell you. Not a breath of wind—nothing. Rank carelessness, that’s what it amounts to. Excuse me, I must get on.”
With the awful inquisitiveness of his breed he scrambled on up the staircase after the departed procession, and the last David saw of him he was worming his way through the crowd, his straw hat still on the back of his head, back to his old advantageous position.
David walked slowly and thoughtfully downstairs. The scene he had watched in the hotel garden came back vividly to his mind. He saw again the tall thin figure in the grey alpaca suit and remembered afresh that extraordinary recovery when the man, so obviously overcome by faintness, had yet saved himself from going over the wall with the stone urn. Was it quite the accident it had seemed?
The fact which leapt to his mind and particularly aroused his interest was the all-important one that it was Marguerite Ferney who had been so nearly killed. Marguerite Ferney was in some inexplicable way connected with the mystery that surrounded Sir Leo and Judy, and in that case, if the accident had been no accident but a deliberate attempt at murder, then the man in the grey alpaca suit was in some way connected with the business also and merited David’s attention.
He strolled out onto the terrace, the whole hotel behind him still buzzing with excitement over the accident. Things were happening so rapidly, clues being strewn so liberally in his path, that he hardly knew how to sort them out. He was debarred from serious consideration just then, however, by the sight of a little group standing at the far end of the terrace by the empty space on the wall where the stone urn of geraniums had once stood.
A considerable crowd of sightseers hung about on the edge of the discussion, and David was able to press in among them.
Standing by the wall were the manager of the Arcadian, the assistant manager, and another official, whom David had never seen before, and, he was delighted to see, the man in the grey alpaca suit himself.
At close quarters, Saxon Marsh’s grey emaciated face made an unpleasant impression upon the young man. Sir Leo, in his private opinion, was not a very formidable type of criminal. His heavy swashbuckling manner hid, David guessed, the proverbial cowardice of the bully.
But this man in the grey alpaca suit was a very different proposition. He was not a type but an individual, and in David’s experience individuals, or people with strong personalities, were by no means easy to handle.
At the moment he was behaving in what David felt must be a characteristic fashion.
“My good sir,” he was saying in his precise dry voice, “you misunderstand me. I am complaining. The stones on this path are uneven. Moreover, there is no shadow. The way the sun beats down upon this garden is a disgrace. Overcome by the heat, I stumbled over one of these infernal stones and only just saved myself from pitching over this ridiculously low wall to my death on the concrete below.”
The manager, a fair, military-looking man with all his wits about him, very different from the hysterical Mr. Populof of the Empress, regarded his client in shocked surprise.
“But, Mr. Marsh,” he protested, and David made a note of the name, “I don’t think you understand. A guest at this hotel has been very nearly killed. I’m sure you would wish to apologize for the terrible shock she has sustained. My dear sir, she might have died. Consider what might have happened then.”
An unpleasant smile passed over Saxon Marsh’s face.
“I think that is an eventuality which you have to consider,” he said. “Not I. Both the lady and myself are the innocent victims of your disgraceful carelessness in permitting such old-fashioned monstrosities to remain in your garden.”
The manager flushed, and David realized that the old man had scored his point. He knew enough about the law to realize that had Marguerite Ferney been killed and the case come into the coroner’s court, this unpleasant old man, with the aid of a competent barrister, could have shifted the blame very neatly onto the hotel authorities. In fact, had it not been for that extraordinary recovery, which he himself had witnessed, he might almost have been inclined to believe the story himself.
“I’m very sorry about the lady,” Marsh went on unctuously, adding placidly, “I’m afraid she has sustained considerable injury.”
“No, I’m thankful to say not,” said another man, evidently of the managerial staff, who had just joined the group. “I’ve been talking to the doctor. It’s just shock. The urn didn’t actually touch her at all. She had left her chair before the urn fell, and although she was borne to the ground by the crash, her injuries really don’t amount to more than a few bruises. You’re a very lucky man, Mr. Marsh.”
“Not at all.” Saxon Marsh’s smile was grim, and David could have sworn that there was something which was disappointment, or even anger, in his eyes. “Not at all. I’m extremely glad the poor woman has met with no serious consequences of the accident, but I register a protest here and now. This hotel garden is dangerous and a menace. I shall write to The Times about it, or at any rate to the local county council. You may send me my bill.”
Turning on his heel, he shouldered his wa
y through the crowd and walked off, leaving them completely routed. David followed him with his eyes, and as he did so caught sight of the now familiar figure of Sir Leo Thyn hurrying across the grass to meet him.
The two met in the middle of the lawn, and Sir Leo turned back and walked to the hotel with his friend. David raised his eyebrows. So Sir Leo and Marsh did know each other. Now he was perfectly certain that the incident he had watched from his bedroom window had been no accident but a deliberate attempt to murder Marguerite Ferney in a diabolically clever way. David felt he was on the track at last.
CHAPTER X
Flight
“NOTHING at all.”
Inspector Winn’s brisk voice sounded positively dispirited over the telephone.
“He’s vanished into thin air, Blest. I didn’t think you’d have anything to report, but formal identification of the corpse has come through and I’m trying to pacify the chief constable as best I can. I put out a general call to the ports, so I expect we shall get him in the end. Thank you for phoning. Good-bye.”
David hung up the receiver and walked out into the lounge of the Arcadian and, sitting down at a small table, ordered a lager. He was considerably troubled in his own mind about his own behaviour in regard to Winn’s case. On the face of it he was holding back valuable information in order to shield Judy, but since his only informant on the subject of Birch’s real identity was Bloomer, and Bloomer had since gone back on that evidence, he considered himself justified in not volunteering what might easily be a mare’s nest.
He was sitting at his little table when Old Charlie came up to him. The old man was in garrulous mood.
“You’ll see ’er come down in a minute,” he murmured. “She isn’t half making a to-do. You’d think the whole hotel ’ad fallen on her and not a bunch of geraniums just missed her.”
“Who? Miss Ferney?” said David, at last catching the thread of the old man’s remarks.
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