The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

certain that he saw it last on the night of the third—Saturday—when you opened the safe to give a Dutch gentleman back his deposit. On Sunday morning the safe was opened at nine o'clock to let a lady put in her jewels, and the box was gone. Can you tell me anything about that box?"

      "That box? Oh, yes, I remember now. That box belonged to me. I often keep spare cash in the safe."

      Both men looked at the safe facing them cemented into the wall of the manager's sitting-room.

      "And the green and white striped paper? I showed the clerk the piece I found in this room the morning after Mr. Beale's—ah—departure, and he positively identifies it as similar to that which he saw in the safe. Yet when I questioned you, sir, about that same piece you expressly stated that it was not yours?"

      The manager did not speak. He looked as if he could not, and after waiting a full minute the Chief Inspector rose.

      "You have no explanation to offer, sir?"

      "What do you mean?" snapped the manager shrilly. "I have explained! Good God, I am explaining! I may have wrapped a box up in any chance piece of paper I found lying around without noticing its color—its stripes!"

      Pointer waited again. Then:

      "You have nothing further to add, sir?"

      "No!" The manager passed his hand across his face as though to wipe away an incautious word.

      The Chief Inspector took out a small black book from an inner pocket and held it in front of the other. "Do you identify this, sir?"

      The manager's face glistened under the light.

      "Of course. It's the safe receipt-book. You have no business with that, officer. Aren't you overstepping your authority?"

      "I think not, sir. Here are the entries up to July 25th—the date Mr. Eames came to the hotel. Here are the entries up to August 4th, the date of his death—and here are the entries from August 4th up to date. Does nothing strike you about them?"

      "Nothing!" The manager's voice was harsh. "They are all in perfect order. Each entry initialed by me and by the visitor, and the dated signed receipt in full when the article or articles were handed back. What mare's nest have you got hold of now?"

      "You have no explanation to offer of the curious fact that up to the 25th the entries are in a different ink from the receipts, and the receipts themselves differ according to the pen used. But from the twenty-fifth of July to August fourth inclusive, that is these ten pages"—he held them up—"though the handwriting differs as before, all the writing is done with one ink throughout and with one nib—a rather pointed fountain pen? After August fourth again the nibs and the ink varies as they do before July 25th.

      "What do you mean?" The manager stared truculently at his inquisitor. "What are you insinuating?"

      "Then, too," continued the detective's level tones, "this book is one of a class Straker habitually stock. But this one is twenty pages short. Someone has evidently cut out the pages on which were the entries of July twenty-fifth to August fourth, and the half-pages which correspond further on, and filled in more or less complete copies—more or less complete"—he repeated meaningly—"of the pages as they stood."

      There was a long silence.

      "Here is a copy of the book, sir, but this one I am taking with me, as you have no explanations to offer."

      The manager made a gesture towards the door and turned on his heel.

      Saluting stiffly, Pointer left the room, and after a word to an unobtrusive figure watching outside, swung himself on to a Bayswater bus.

      O'Connor received the news of the day's work with enthusiasm. The police officer took a more moderate tone and pointed out that they were only now where most cases started—that is, in possession of the name of the victim.

      "—but I'm not denying it's a step forward, chiefly because it's our best chance of getting at the motive. And the motive will be the only key that will unlock this puzzle." He spoke with conviction. "If it were a case of circumstantial evidence we might spend the rest of our lives working at it. That balcony, that service-stair practically throw the case open to all London."

      "What about Miss Leslie?"

      The other stared a moment. "Well, what about her? Her alibi is fairly good. May be true, what young 'what's his name' says."

      "You think it's the manager?"

      "I wonder if I really do?" murmured Pointer sarcastically.

      "Looks as though he were certainly in it for something, even if it's only shielding Beale," O'Connor answered for him. "Then there's Carter-Cox. He has a direct inducement."

      "Very direct."

      "Curious will that!" O'Connor spoke almost to himself.

      "But then the whole thing is odd." Pointer puffed away in silence.

      "True for you," O'Connor nodded; "the separate slips—that will sent to his old family solicitor, with whom he had had next to no dealings. And then you spoke of his clothes—"

      "They struck even the jeweler when he went about his watch," agreed Pointer. "All well enough in their way, but not at all those of a wealthy young man."

      "And a mother with over seven thousand a year, and an uncle worth as much, too—he must have made the money fly!"

      O'Connor's tone of virtuous horror made Pointer think of Russell.

      The next day was a Sunday, but the Chief Inspector arranged that Russell should send off a wire to Mrs. Erskine breaking the news to her that an accident had happened to Robert in London, followed by another telling her that the accident had been fatal. By the afternoon they had the reply from Nice: "Starting at once. ERSKINE." On Monday morning, however, came another cable from Mrs. Erskine, this time from Paris: "Ill. Doctor forbids journey." It was sent from the Gare St. Lazare station. Mr. Russell and Pointer set out the same day for the French capital. It was to Mr. Russell, naturally, that the task of telling the mother the facts about her son's death fell. In any case Pointer would have seen to it that the man who knew only the general outline should be the tale bearer. He saw no good in harrowing Mrs. Erskine's feelings prematurely with an account of the wardrobe and the police certainty of foul play.

      He walked about Paris the morning after his arrival, wondering, as so often before, at the city's reputation for beauty. Charming in parts, yes, but—to his mind—its general reputation rested on "mass suggestion," so unspeakably dreary and sordid did he always find the greater part of it. The cafés with their comfortless chairs and tables at which people drank weirdly colored drinks, of which—still according to him—the less said the better, were a back number compared with a London tea-room. He was glad when eleven struck, and he was shown into Mrs. Erskine's great bedroom. A thin figure, almost lost among her pillows on the couch, held out a trembling hand. Its chill told him how greatly Russell's story had drained the mother's vitality. He murmured some words of regret as he took a chair. The son had evidently inherited his mother's general air of pallor, and he saw where the young man had got his one peaked eyebrow from. The Abercrombie eyebrow, as Mr. Russell had called it. Mrs. Erskine had it very markedly, and its unlikeness to its fellow lifted her pale face out of the commonplace.

      "Mr. Russell has just told me"—her voice was rather flat and toneless—"all the details. I can't quite grasp what has happened yet, my only child..."

      Again he murmured a sentence of sympathy. "I wouldn't dream of intruding, madame," he said earnestly, "but we want to clear up the motive! for what has happened. Had Mr. Robert Erskine ever spoken of putting an end to his life before?"

      Mrs. Erskine did not answer for a moment or two. When she did it was with a visible effort. The Chief Inspector guessed what it must cost an evidently reserved woman to lay bare her lack of any affection from her son. "Not exactly...but my unhappy son did not find in life all he hoped from it, I fear. He liked gaiety—as youth always does,—and perhaps...life disappointed him. His letters—he wrote infrequently, naturally, his very popularity left him