THE WHODUNIT COLLECTION: British Murder Mysteries (15 Novels in One Volume). Charles Norris Williamson

to cut the story short, I lent him five thousand dollars. A month later, he wrote to me for two thousand, and got it. A few weeks after that I read of a great fraud engineered in Central America and there was a three-column portrait in the paper of the man at the bottom of it—my brother. That opened my eyes. When next he came to me—he was audacious enough to do it within the year—I charged him with living by fraud. He laughed in my face and admitted it. When I threatened to call in the police, he merely shrugged his shoulders and asked what I thought of a flaming headline in the press:

      'BROTHER OF SENATOR GRELL HELD FOR BIG FRAUDS.'

      "I could see it all just as he painted it. My political career was very dear to me just then. Such a thing would have killed it. I knew if I exposed him he was capable of carrying out his threat. However, I told him to get out of the place before I threw him out of the window. He could see I was losing my temper and took a little pistol from his pocket—a Derringer.

      "'I have a number of letters which you sent to a lady in Vienna,' he said. 'I know many newspapers which would offer me a good price for 'em.'

      "I think it was perhaps fortunate for me that he held the pistol—or I might have done something I should afterwards have regretted. He flung a letter face upwards on the table. It was one of those I had written to Lola Rachael. If he had the rest of the correspondence—and he swore that he had—it would have been deadly in the hands of an unscrupulous political opponent. As you know, electioneering in the States is rather different from what it is here. I was fool enough to pay him money on his promise to suppress them. He would not sell them outright.

      "That was the beginning. After that I never had a secure moment unless I was away on an exploring expedition. The moment I reappeared in civilisation my brother would seek me out. He was cunning enough to press me only to the verge of endurance. He could judge exactly how much I would stand. At last, however, I resolved not to yield another penny to his extortions. I cut loose from all my affairs in the United States and came to England. I thought I could fight him when I had reduced the stakes. I found after all that I had increased them, for I met Eileen—Lady Eileen Meredith."

      He paused. Neither of his two hearers said anything. An injudicious remark might break the thread of his thoughts.

      "When I became engaged to her," Grell resumed, "I knew that it would not be long before Goldenburg would see his chance. I set to work to find Lola, and discovered her as the Princess Petrovska. Then for the first time I learned that she had married Goldenburg—but she admitted that any affection she held for him had long since faded. They had parted a few weeks after the marriage—which they both seemed to regard somewhat cynically—and she had resumed her first husband's name. She admitted that she had helped him to blackmail me, but apparently she herself had handled little enough of the loot. She was vicious enough about it. I gave her a cheque and induced her to come to London. I had it in mind to stop this blackmail before I was married.

      "As I expected, Goldenburg was not long in scenting profit. He descended on me ravenously. I told him that I would pay him ten thousand pounds if he would put all the letters he possessed in my hands but that I would not otherwise buy his silence. He could see that I was in earnest, and asked for time to consider. I gave him till the night before my wedding. I said nothing of the Princess Petrovska. I knew that they would meet. One cannot be too scrupulous in dealing with a scoundrel, and she had her instructions—to steal the letters from him if necessary, while pretending that she was only anxious to join forces with him in looting me.

      "But all her efforts went for nothing. He recognised the value of her co-operation in the circumstances, but would give her no hint of the place where he had concealed the letters. Time drew on. You will know enough of her to recognise Lola as a clever, resolute woman. She made up her mind to accompany Goldenburg to his appointment with me as a last resort. It was to keep that appointment that I left Ralph Fairfield at the club the night before the wedding—the night of the murder."

      He breathed heavily. Thornton picked up a piece of paper and crumbled it nervously between his lean hands. Foyle, eager and alert, was leaning forward, anxious not to miss a word. A great deal of what had been obscure was being cleared up. But so far nothing that Grell had said but could be interpreted as a motive—and a singularly strong one—which might in other circumstances weave a hangman's rope about his own neck.

      "You did not want any one to know that you were absent from the club," remarked Foyle. "Why?"

      "That was merely a matter of precaution. I wanted my interview with Goldenburg to be secret. I had given Goldenburg a note which would ensure his being shown to my study and I was purposely a bit late for the appointment. I wanted to give the Princess Petrovska all the opportunities possible. But when I reached there it was clear to me that she had failed. He had not brought the letters with him. I got rid of the woman, and Goldenburg and I quarreled. Then it was that I killed him."

      "And what of the other woman?" asked the superintendent.

      "What other woman?"

      "The veiled woman who was shown up to you by Ivan."

      "There was no other woman," said Grell, his lips tightening. "I have told you as much as I intend to."

      "Just as you like. I believe you have told the truth up to a point, Mr. Grell. It is fair to assume that a blackmailer of Goldenburg's calibre would have taken precautions lest you should fail to comply with his demands. Doesn't it appear a fair assumption that he might have taken steps to arrange the presence of the person most interested, next to yourself? He probably never mentioned that he had done so until it was too late for you to stop her. I mean Lady Eileen Meredith."

      The table crashed to the floor as Grell, the last remnants of his self-restraint gone, leapt to his feet. Sir Hilary Thornton sprang between the two men. Foyle also had risen, and though his face was impassive the blue eyes were sparkling and his fists were clenched.

      "You liar!" raved Grell. "How dare you bring her name into it!"

      "This excitement will not advance matters," said Foyle placidly. "Sit down for a little, Mr. Grell. You cannot prevent the inevitable."

      The tense muscles of the prisoner relaxed and a shivering fit shook him from head to foot. He could see the blow that he had striven to avert falling while he stood impotent. He had taken every risk, made every sacrifice man could make, to turn it aside. Now he had been told that he had failed. It was not easy to admit defeat. His debonair courage had gone.

      Sir Hilary Thornton laid a hand gently on his shoulder. "My dear Mr. Grell," he said, "I don't want to use the ordinary cant about duty and all the rest of it. We may sympathise with you—personally, I admire the attitude you have taken, though perhaps I shouldn't say it—but our own feelings do not matter the toss of a button. Nothing you can do or say will swerve us from what we judge to be the interests of justice."

      "Let me alone for a little while," answered Grell dully; "I want to think."

      They sent him back to the detention-room where, with a constable seated opposite to him, he was to spend the night. Foyle rested one arm on the mantelpiece and kicked the fire viciously into a blaze.

      "Ours is an ungrateful business, Sir Hilary," he grumbled, "but I've never come across a man who put so many difficulties in the way of being saved from the gallows as Mr. Robert Grell."

      Thornton took a long breath that was almost a sigh. "Poor chap," he said reflectively. "Poor chap!" And then, after an interval, "Poor girl! Couldn't you have dropped a hint, Foyle?"

      The introduction of sentiment into business was a folly that Heldon Foyle seldom permitted himself. With a shrug he pulled himself together. He shook his head. "We've got to be more certain yet. I daren't tell him too much—for my idea may prove to be wrong. You must remember that it was undoubtedly Eileen Meredith's finger-prints on the dagger. At present it is only surmise of mine how they got there. Finding the prints on her blotting-pad, which I showed you, corresponded with those on the dagger you gave me, was one of the biggest surprises of my life. But we may clear it up now."

      "H'm," said Thornton. "Well, we shall have to look sharp."