The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

boat, when a hand touched his shoulder.

      "Mr. Vardon? Don't go on. There's an officer from Scotland Yard waiting to arrest you by the gangway. Come with me. I'm a friend."

      The man to whom these words were hurriedly whispered, jumped, and swung round on his heel.

      "Let your gear go, and follow me. I've a taxi. Been waiting for you before they should nab you," Wilmot urged. Vardon followed the other to a cab. Once they were in, he loosened his muffler which hid the lower part of his face. "Who on earth are you?"

      Wilmot gave his name. To his surprise, it apparently conveyed nothing to Vardon.

      "Newspaper man, you say? But how are you mixed up in this?"

      "I travelled down in the same compartment with a C.I.D. man, and he talked a bit," Wilmot said. Truthfully enough. Pointer had talked—to him. "I learnt that you had been shadowed when you bought your ticket. Your passport gave you away. You had to have it renewed, didn't you? Hard luck! Well, I determined to get in first and whisk you off."

      "But—why?"

      "I'm acting as claims' investigator for the company in which Mrs. Tangye was insured. The policies excluded suicides. We believe her death to have been self-inflicted."

      "Mrs. Tangye's death? But what on earth has that to do with me?" Vardon asked in seeming stupefaction. "I thought it was the notes that were in question."

      Wilmot looked at him for a moment in silence.

      "The police believe that death to have been a murder. Or at least they're trying to believe it," he said finally.

      "What hour did she die?" Vardon asked feverishly. He certainly was either innocent, or a good actor.

      "Between four and six on Tuesday afternoon at her house in Twickenham." There was absolute silence in the cab.

      "Stop!" the artist suddenly rose. "Drive to the police station. I must face this thing. It's worse even than I thought. Infinitely worse. And that was bad enough!"

      "I shouldn't go to the police, if I were you," Wilmot suggested, "better let me take you to a house I know of where you can have time to think things over."

      "I'm innocent!" Vardon declared almost defiantly.

      "My dear fellow, there is no criminal here in my belief. No fact has been laid before me—as yet—of a nature to change my opinion that Mrs. Tangye's death was a suicide, if not an accident. Apart altogether from acting for the Insurance Company, I—so far—believe that she shot herself because of domestic trouble."

      "So do I!" came from the man beside him. "I'm absolutely certain that she killed herself. That was why she let me have that money. She wanted to make a gift of it. I've understood the whole strange episode since reading of her end."

      Wilmot turned to him eagerly.

      "Good. You can prove that?"

      "Prove nothing. It's only my firm belief. Looking back on what she said, and how she said it."

      There was another silence.

      "Look here," Wilmot said, "I'm a newspaper man, as I told you, Special Correspondent to the Daily Courier, but not a syllable gets into the press of what you tell me. My word on that."

      "Where are you taking me?" was Vardon's reply. He seemed wrestling with his own thoughts.

      "To the rooms of a friend of a friend of mine." Again Wilmot spoke the literal truth. The rooms belonged to a friend of Pointer's. "You can stay quietly there till we can think of the best thing to do. How about changing your name?"

      "I'd rather not. The police can't have anything worth while against me."

      "Then, why did you run away?" Wilmot's glance asked. Vardon flushed.

      "It's awfully good of you to take me on trust, this way," he said awkwardly, as they drew up in a quiet street of Sloane Square.

      The door was opened by a man who, though Vardon could not know it, was of the greatest service to the Yard. He, and his neatly kept house in which Pointer had installed him.

      Going upstairs—the rooms were on the first floor, Bates never had any rooms on the ground floor "empty." It was too easy to get into and out of them—Vardon tripped. He recovered himself instantly.

      "My leg gives out at times. Broke my knee-cap when I first got to Patagonia."

      Wilmot was very thoughtful for some time after that little mishap.

      The rooms were all that could be asked. The terms amazingly moderate.

      But Wilmot explained that they belonged to an "explorer" who sub-let them during his long absences. He did not add that the gentleman was now exploring Dartmoor prison. Vardon heaved a quick sigh, as he heard the door close. "Ever hunted?" he asked Wilmot.

      "Rather! Why?"

      "I used to love it. Used to think November marked the beginning of the real year. But never again! By Jove, no! Now that I know what it feels like to have the hounds after you."

      There was a silence. Wilmot was patiently waiting. Vardon leant on the mantelpiece.

      "I wonder if you'll think me a fraud? After all your trouble and risk to get me here. But I must talk things over with my solicitor first. D'you mind coming in later on? Say, after dinner? About nine?"

      Wilmot said he quite understood, and would come again at about ten.

      Vardon held out his hand.

      "I'm more grateful than I can say. Just at present I'm a bit stunned. You must make allowances."

      They shook hands and Wilmot went back to Pointer.

      The Chief Inspector sat thinking for a moment after Wilmot left him. A bell rang. He had a telephone extension which connected with Bates's instrument. Picking up that receiver, the Chief Inspector heard a voice asking for a number. A glance at the Yard's telephone directory gave him the name that fitted it as Dorset Steele, Solicitor, Bedford Row.

      "Mr. Dorset Steele wanted on the telephone at once, please. No name," the voice went on. There was a pause. Then Pointer heard a gruff: "Well? Well? What is it? What is it?"

      "Can you come and see me? You recognise the voice, don't you?"

      "I do. Well? Well?" snapped the solicitor.

      "I'm in a quandary. I can't come myself, but I'd like to see you as soon as possible," Vardon gave his address.

      "Coming at once," barked Dorset Steele, and hung up. Apparently Vardon was not the apple of the legal man's eye, yet in a very few minutes, Bates showed Dorset Steele up. A tall, thin, rather untidy looking man who carried his head a foot in advance of his rounded shoulders. The "lost golf-ball" look, Barbara Ash called it.

      "Now, what's wrong?" he snapped by way of greeting, looking at the young man under his eyebrows like an old poodle of uncertain temper.

      "I'm in a nasty hole. So much so that I didn't venture to clamber out by myself, until I had talked things over with you. The police all but arrested me to-day for the murder, or a share in the murder, of Mrs. Tangye."

      "Ah!" Dorset Steele tossed his soft hat into a chair as though it were the ring. Then he promptly sat down on it. He stretched out his muddy boots—his boots seemed to find mud as a water diviner does springs—subconsciously. Then he nodded to himself, as though this were what he had long expected, and on the whole, hoped would happen.

      "Your story?" he asked curtly, squinting at the other around a collar that suggested a liking for comfort.

      "I haven't much of a one. Mrs. Tangye came to my rooms last Tuesday about—well shortly before three as nearly as I can now recollect. She said she knew that I had some sort of a land proposition in the Argentine in which I was trying to interest people over here. And that she had decided that as I was Clive's only relative, and he had left everything to her—Clive Branscombe was her first husband, you know—she wanted to take an