by Molly Thynne
The last words, spoken with the quiet conviction of one stating an established truth, did more to reassure Betty than the rather half-hearted encouragement that had been meted out to her all through that long day. There was something impressive in Civita’s calm air of authority, and when he withdrew, after a few well-chosen words of sympathy, he left a more cheerful atmosphere behind him.
They sat for a time over their coffee and then parted.
Constantine had a few words with the cloak-room attendant on his way out, but beyond the fact that the man he had seen with the old gentleman had been dark and not very tall, he gleaned nothing.
It was not till nearly five o’clock on the following day that he was able to get in touch with Arkwright, who, tired though he was with his journey from Paris, and secretly convinced that the old man would turn up in the course of the next few hours, had too much regard for Constantine to disappoint him. He promised to give the matter his personal attention, and Constantine, having passed on the news to Betty that, so far as accident or illness was concerned, the police had drawn a blank, returned to his flat.
Once there he dealt summarily with two alternative invitations for Easter with which he had been mildly dallying since his return to England. Apart from the fact that the weather showed little sign of improving, he felt no desire to leave London at this juncture. Added to his growing interest in the fate of the elusive Mr. Anthony was an impish delight in the contemplation of the Duchess’s reactions to this unexpected complication of her son’s affairs. That she would eventually yield to Betty’s quite exceptional charms he had no doubt, but it would be after a manner peculiarly her own.
He had just handed the letters to Manners for the post when the telephone-bell rang. Marlowe was at the other end, talking rapidly in a voice very unlike his usual lazy drawl.
“I’m with Betty,” he said. “Someone’s ransacked her rooms while she was rehearsing. She came back and found the place in the dickens of a mess. Drawers turned upside down and the floor covered with papers and things. She rang me up, and I’ve only just got here. Shall I get on to the local police or will you tell your friend at Scotland Yard?”
“How much has been taken?” asked Constantine. “Did Betty keep any jewellery in her room?”
“As far as we can see there’s nothing of hers missing, though we haven’t had time to make a thorough search. The thief seems to have given her room a miss. There was about five pounds odd in her grandfather’s bedroom, and that hasn’t been touched. And none of her trinkets are gone. I don’t believe it’s an ordinary burglary.”
“Stay where you are,” said Constantine decisively. “I’ll try to get Arkwright and then come round myself.”
When he and Arkwright drove up to the house half an hour later, Marlowe opened the door to them himself.
“We’ve left things as they were when Betty found them,” he said, “but we’ve gone through them pretty thoroughly and there’s nothing missing apparently. Certainly nothing of any value has been taken. And Mrs. Berry, here, has seen the thief.”
He stood aside and revealed a stout, comfortable-looking woman in a state of breathless indignation.
“Let him in myself, I did,” she panted. “Never suspected a thing, I didn’t. Said he’d come to tune the piano, same as usual; and tune it he did, at least I heard him myself a-runnin’ up and down it the way they do. And he was carryin’ a little black bag and all.”
Betty’s voice reached them from where she stood on the landing.
“The piano was tuned less than three weeks ago, and I’ve just rung up the people who have always done it for us and they say they sent no one.”
“What did the man look like?” demanded Arkwright.
“Well, I didn’t look at him very close,” admitted Mrs. Berry. “I was expecting me husband back early and wanted to get on with his tea. He was shortish, and he’d got a little dark moustache and spoke like a foreigner. That didn’t surprise me because they generally send someone foreign for the piano—a Belgian I think he is. One of those refugees that have stayed over. Isn’t that right, Miss Anthony?”
“Yes,” agreed Betty. “But Duval, the man they generally send, hasn’t got a moustache. He’s tall and fair. You know him quite well, Mrs. Berry.”
“That’s right,” agreed Mrs. Berry cordially. “But this one bein’ foreign too made me think it was all right, if you understand me. He spoke just like a piano-tuner, too.”
Arkwright, with an amused glance at Constantine, refrained from further research into the language of piano-tuners and brought her firmly back to the point.
“You say he did tune the piano?” he said. “Were you within hearing all the time?”
“He certainly started on it,” she answered doubtfully. “I could hear him ripplin’ up and down. But I was in a hurry to get on with the tea, and down in the kitchen you can’t hear much, and anyway, I wasn’t listenin’.”
“Did you see him out?”
“No, He let himself out, the way the other tuner does. I didn’t see him again.”
“Looks as if that was our man all right. Would you know him again if you saw him?”
Mrs. Berry shook her head hopelessly.
“I might, and then again I mightn’t,” she said, with an agonized glance at Betty. “I wouldn’t have had this happen for anything, and you in such trouble already!”
Betty ran down the stairs and propelled her with comforting words towards the basement while Marlowe led the way to the scene of the crime.
The sitting-room was in a state of hopeless disorder. Every drawer of a massive bureau that stood in the window had been wrenched out and the contents emptied on to the floor, and, from the look of it, the accumulated epistolary litter of years was piled on the carpet.
Arkwright, his massive figure almost filling the doorway, ran a quick, seeing eye over the room.
“Any real valuables kept in here, Miss Anthony?” he asked.
She pointed to a table near the piano.
“There are a couple of snuff-boxes, one silver and one gold, in the drawer there,” she answered. “My grandfather takes snuff and these were given to him. I believe they’re worth a lot. And the violin in the case on the piano would be worth taking. But the thief probably wouldn’t know that, I suppose.”
Arkwright took the room in a couple of strides and opened the drawer of the table. The snuff-boxes were revealed, lying among a litter of smaller objects.
“Not been touched,” he said. “Did Mr. Anthony go in for autographs or etchings, or anything of that sort?”
Betty shook her head.
“I’m sure he had nothing of the kind of any value. I’m not certain what he kept in the drawers of the bureau, but I’m pretty sure that it was the usual collection of business papers and letters. I glanced over this mess without touching it, and it looks a perfectly ordinary jumble of receipts and things.”
Arkwright bent over the piano.
“He opened this and ‘rippled up and down it’ all right, and that’s about all he did. Doesn’t seem to have left any marks, but I’ll have it tested. It might be one of our old friends, but I doubt it. May I see your room, Miss Anthony?”
Betty led the way across the passage, and Constantine and Marlowe were left together.
“They’ll surely take the old man’s disappearance seriously after this,” said Marlowe in a low voice.
“You think there’s some connection?”
Marlowe stared at him.
“I don’t see how else to account for it. The chap who did this wasn’t after loot. I’ve seen Betty’s bits of jewellery. They aren’t worth much, but they haven’t been touched.”
They were interrupted by the return of Arkwright.
“Suppose we try to get some order into all this?” he said genially, squatting on his heels in front of the most formidable heap of papers. “It oughtn’t to take long if we all lend a hand.”
In a shorter time than seemed possible they had every
thing sorted and back in the drawers of the bureau. Arkwright stood in front of it, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
“Just as Miss Anthony said,” he murmured. “Not a valuable or even confidential document among them, with the exception of a few private letters. Will you glance through them, Miss Anthony?”
Betty went through the contents of the packet he handed her.
“There’s nothing here,” she said at last. “They almost all deal with professional matters, and couldn’t possibly be of any interest to anyone. There are some letters of mine here too. I didn’t know he had kept them.”
She bent over the packet, her face hidden, and busied herself with stacking the envelopes together. But her fingers fumbled at their task, and Marlowe, with a side-glance at Arkwright, went over and squatted on the floor beside her.
But Arkwright had not noticed her emotion. He was turning over the pages of a cheap commercial diary in which Mr. Anthony had apparently been in the habit of jotting down the events of each day. Constantine, looking over his shoulder, saw that it contained only the barest statement of the old man’s movements. Evidently he kept it merely for the sake of possible reference. He was turning away when a low exclamation from Arkwright caught his ear.
“Miss Anthony,” he said, “do you know whether your grandfather made regular entries in this diary? I mean, did he keep it up to date or just write it up every now and then from memory?”
Betty’s voice came, husky but emphatic.
“He wrote it up every evening before he went to bed. He was extraordinarily methodical about things like that. When he didn’t come home on Tuesday I looked in it to see if he’d mentioned anything that might give me some clue as to his plans, but there was nothing”
“It was up to date when you looked at it?”
Betty turned to him in surprise.
“The last entry was on Monday night,” she said “Can’t you find it?”
For answer Arkwright held the book towards her, the covers bent back so that she could see the jagged ridges of paper where the leaves had been torn out. She sprang to her feet.
“Why, half the book’s gone!” she exclaimed. “It wasn’t like that when I looked at it on Tuesday!”
Arkwright put the book down on the flap of the bureau, hooked his foot round the leg of a chair, drew it towards him and sat down.
“Now,” he said with grim satisfaction, “we know where we are and what all this mess is about. Let’s see what’s missing.”
He turned over the pages.
“A day to a page. All right up to January the eighteenth. That’s missing, and so is every page up to March the twenty-second. Torn out in a hurry too. If the chap had had more time I’ll wager he’d have been more selective in his choice, and we probably shouldn’t have noticed anything. Now do these dates mean anything to you?”
Betty hesitated.
“I’m a fool about dates. Give me a moment.”
She stood drooping, one slim hand over her eyes, then suddenly:
“January! I was away in January. Let me have the diary.”
She flipped back half a dozen pages immediately before the cut.
“Here it is. I knew Grandfather would have made a note of it.”
She pointed to the entry. It ran:
“Betty left for Manchester by the nine-thirty.”
“I didn’t come back for three weeks,” she went on breathlessly. “Wait, I believe I know!”
Before Arkwright could open his lips she had thrust the book back into his hands and was out of the room. They could hear her footsteps on the stairs and her voice calling Mrs. Berry. Arkwright turned an enquiring eye on Marlowe, only to realize that there was no help to be got from that quarter.
Constantine sat waiting, his mind going back to a conversation he had had in his very room only the day before.
It was to him she turned when she came back.
“I was right!” she cried. “Mrs. Berry remembers the date quite well. He went away on January the eighteenth.”
“Your grandfather?”
The question was Arkwright’s, and it was Constantine who answered him.
“A pretty little problem, Arkwright. On January the eighteenth Mr. Anthony took a journey. Except that he went of his own volition and evidently expected to be away for several days, his whereabouts seem to have been as ambiguous as they are at present. He came back, when?”
“On the evening of the twentieth, Mrs. Berry says,” answered Betty.
“It looks as if the missing pages in that diary are those containing any reference to his journey,” continued Constantine.
Betty turned to him, dismay in her eyes.
“Then if I’d only had the sense to look up those dates on Tuesday night, we might have had some idea where he’s gone!”
“You can hardly blame yourself,” said Constantine. “But these missing pages shed a rather interesting light on that sudden journey of his. Whoever took them was content to leave the entries up to the very day of his departure untouched.”
“Knowing, apparently, that they contained nothing dangerous,” cut in Arkwright. “I see your point. Until the actual day on which he left his house Mr. Anthony himself was unaware that he was about to be called away. It looks as if history had repeated itself.”
He stopped at the sight of Betty’s stricken face.
“But why should there be danger in the diary now?” she cried. “What can anybody have to hide?”
None of the three men could find words in which to answer her.
CHAPTER IV
CONSTANTINE waited while Arkwright interviewed Mrs. Berry, and then suggested that he should join him in a hasty meal before returning to the Yard. Arrived at the club, Arkwright plunged into the telephone-box. Constantine was already in the dining-room when he came out.
“Do you realize how late it is?” he asked. “Close on nine o’clock. Knowing you’d got to get back to the Yard, I thought I’d better hurry things up here. No news of the old man, I suppose?”
“None. We shall have to put out an SOS if we don’t get something soon. I must admit, this business to-day makes the whole thing look a bit fishy. How much do you really know about these Anthonys, sir?”
“Nothing,” said Constantine frankly; “but it seems to me that, judging by the daughter and her surroundings, they speak for themselves. Apart from the fact that the girl is exceptionally charming, she appears to be a perfectly normal example of the intelligent professional class. There’s a dash of Latin blood in her, I should imagine. Certainly the grandfather has lived abroad. From her description I should say that he belongs to the old-fashioned type of musician, such as one used to find by the hundred in Germany. Wrapped up in his art, probably intolerant of modern standards and quite impervious to social or monetary distinctions. Intellectual snobbery he might be guilty of, but he sounds a singularly independent and strong-minded old person. Whatever may be behind these mysterious departures of his, I should be surprised if it was anything he has cause to be ashamed of.”
“Where, precisely, does Lord Marlowe come in?”
“Unofficially he and Miss Anthony are engaged, and, I fancy, it will not be long before the announcement will be made. The grandfather is opposing the match. That will give you a clue as his character.”
“On what grounds?”
“Social, I should say, but there may be more behind it.”
Constantine told Arkwright of Mr. Anthony’s letter to Lord Marlowe.
“That doesn’t look as if he had been contemplating a journey of any kind,” said Arkwright.
“I’m convinced that he wasn’t. On the last occasion he went off at a moment’s notice, and that’s no doubt what happened this time. Miss Anthony’s comment this afternoon on the destruction of the diary was disconcertingly to the point. I don’t like it, Arkwright!”
“I shan’t be sorry when he’s found,” agreed the inspector. “If this diary business is an attempt to cover up his traces it looks a b
it ominous. You’ve built up a pretty good portrait of him from hearsay, sir; can you think of any reason why a respectable elderly musician should go traipsing off into the void like this?”
“I can’t. Frankly, he’s the last person I should suspect of such a thing. He may have been decoyed away by the offer of some professional engagement. I understand that he was dissatisfied with his job at the cinema. More than a cut above it, I imagine. But that wouldn’t account for the secrecy.”
“I’ve been having a dig round at the Trastevere,” said Arkwright. “You know what he went there for?”
Constantine’s eyes lit up with interest.
“For some reason that Civita didn’t care to reveal before Miss Anthony,” he said. “What was it?”
“According to the proprietor, he was in search of funds. Something to do with a quartette he was keen on. Mr. Civita was interested, and had offered to put up some of the money. The idea seems to have been for Anthony to give up his present job and go on tour with some other musicians. Does that fit in with what you know of him, sir?”
“Perfectly. But I don’t understand why he didn’t discuss it with his grand-daughter. I think she’d have mentioned it if he had.”
“Apparently Civita was to share the proceeds till the loan had been paid back. He thought it a sound financial preposition, and, if he’d had the money ready, would have handed it over on Tuesday night, but he hadn’t expected Anthony so soon and hadn’t had time to make arrangements with his bank, so, when he heard that Anthony was there, he sent a waiter with a written message asking him to call on the following day for the cheque. Anthony sent a verbal assent. I’ve verified all this, seen the waiter and the page to whom he handed the envelope. The page gave it to Anthony. So that’s that.”
“That’s the boy Marlowe tried to run to earth and couldn’t get hold of?”
“He was off duty last night. According to his account he was standing by the porter outside when Anthony arrived. Anthony asked him if Mr. Civita was disengaged. The boy spoke to a waiter, who ran Civita to earth in his office. Civita, who was very busy, scribbled a few words on a card, shoved it in an envelope and sent it to Anthony, with a verbal message to the effect that he was engaged. The waiter passed it on to the page, who, finding Anthony still outside the restaurant, talking, so he says, to another man, delivered it and took the answer. He declares that he could identify this man, but he went straight back into the restaurant and has no idea what Anthony did after that.”
