The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

very bad for the partner Cox, or Carter, doesn't it, sir?"

      Pointer looked at him with the filmy eyes of deep thought. "Think so? Possibly."

      "What do you think, Mr. O'Connor?"

      O'Connor was quite willing to oblige. "Carter is a big chap by all accounts, and Erskine's friend. Why should he choose a place so certain to be discovered as a hotel bedroom? Why not take Erskine for a run in a motor, stun him, and drop him into a pond? I can't think he's such a fool as not to have been able to make some better opportunity than that wardrobe."

      "Fit of passion, sir?"

      "But," objected O'Connor, "why the marks of tugging on Erskine's collar which the photo shows?"

      When Watts had taken a belated departure, O'Connor looked at his friend.

      "So they're crooks. I shouldn't have thought that somehow. Your account of the honest marks of wear on Erskine's wardrobe made me put him down as poor but honest."

      Pointer only smoked on, his hands clasped behind his neck.

      "D'ye think some of your light-fingered friends have welcomed their brethren from across the ocean and the lot have fallen out?"

      "This doesn't look like the work of anyone I can call to mind at the moment." Pointer ruminated over the masterpieces he had come across in the past. "Still you never know," he wound up.

      During the night a cable from Calgary arrived and was duly waiting on his table at the Yard.

      Calgary. Robert Erskine, Scotsman. Inherited largest ranch here, Four Winds by name, from his uncle, Ian Erskine, twelve years ago. Sold it seven years ago at a loss and moved to Toronto. Reputation of uncle and nephew of the best in every way. John Carter. Frequent visitor at Four Winds. Prospector and son of a Toronto Prospector. Good repute.

      Pointer meditated some time over this before he filed it. Another cable was sent to Toronto asking for full particulars of the warrant out against the two men, and the photos of both were duly posted for identification.

      Mr. Russell dropped in on the Chief Inspector at lunch, but beyond a question as to whether he had ever heard that Robert Erskine was interested in any business Pointer kept his own counsel. The solicitor was evidently unaware that young Erskine did not still own the ranch.

      "So you didn't get anything helpful by coming to Paris?" the solicitor continued, as the two men turned in for a cup of tea. He himself had been prostrated by the rough crossing the night before, and had hardly been able to exchange a couple of words with his companion in the crowded railway carriage.

      "Except a general idea of the deceased's character as shown in his letters."

      "Ah, yes, true. I had a long conversation with Mrs. Erskine and a very trying one."

      "How so trying?"

      "Aye, women, even the best of them shouldn't be trusted with money."

      The Scotsman drank his tea sternly. "She wants everything sold out and put into an annuity."

      "She" of course referred to Mrs. Erskine. The Chief Inspector turned the matter over carefully to see whether he could extract any grist for his mills from it.

      "Well, why not?"

      "Eh, man, why not?" Then light seemed to break on the Scotsman. "Ah, I see I hadn't made myself clear. The trouble is, she wants it done immediately. You know how securities change. All of hers are good enough. Some very sound, some industrials. For instance, she put quite a large sum into some shares a few years ago which stood at twice what they stand at today. We approved after a fashion, provided she was willing to discount market fluctuations. But now she wants to fling some thousands of shares suddenly on the market—it's madness. The same way with some mortgages we arranged for her, you can't change that class of security into cash at a moment's notice. Yet that's what she wants. Of course, we won't do it. In her own interests we can't. I didn't tell her that naturally, but she'll find that it takes more time than she thinks to put a fortune as large as her half is into an annuity."

      "I wonder why the hurry?" Pointer was deeply interested.

      "I can't make it out." Mr. Russell's curiosity was evidently at work. "Mrs. Erskine has hitherto been such a good business woman. I'm the last to deny that she has made most advantageous purchases at times, but now to be willing to throw away at least one quarter of her fortune, if not a half, just for some mad whim of speed—it's beyond me. And an annuity, tool They're none so safe these days. Why not Government gilt-edged stocks? That's what I've been recommending to her, but no! It's to be an annuity and damn the cost. Man, I'm fairly tired out with yesterday's argy-bargy."

      Pointer turned the whim of Mrs. Erskine over and over in his mind while the inquest progressed next day, and finally laid the matter on one side, "to come up if called upon to do so" at some future time when it might fit some fresh fact.

      The inquest caused a great stir among the papers, as any whisper of a murder always does, and in the facts as laid before the public—in a strictly limited dose—there was enough and to spare of the strange. Mr. Beale was not mentioned, neither was Mrs. Erskine, nor were the cables from Canada read, but a detailed account of the finding of the body by the police in the wardrobe, and of its belated identification, caused the evening papers to do a roaring trade, while the inquest itself was adjourned for another fortnight so as to "allow of the authorities in Canada being communicated with."

      CHAPTER VI

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      THE very morning after the inquest a piece of news reached London that made the Chief Inspector jump for his hat. A wealthy American named Beale had been found bound and gagged in one of the leading Brussels hotels. The room where he was discovered belonged to another American named Green. Mr. Beale, on his release, had described to the reporters how he had been lured to the room under the pretext of purchasing a rare painting, robbed, and left tied up and gagged. The description of his assailant tallied with the man wanted by the Yard as Cox, or Carter. Pointer flew across within a couple of hours after opening his morning paper, and found Mr. Beale surrounded by a knot of reporters. Beale looked up at him with a saturnine grin.

      "Yes, it's me, Chief. I'm too young and inexperienced for this wicked world. Have a drink?" The American dismissed the reporters good-naturedly but firmly. Then he smiled, showing his teeth in an apparent merriment which never touched his eyes—cold and keen.

      "Well, I guess I'll come across with the story. That man who called himself Green is one of our cleverest crooks. He certainly doesn't live up to his name! I was after him in London when I stumbled into that queer story of Eames. Oh, I'm on my vacation all right, but there's no holiday that would do me the good that getting my hands on Green would. Personal reasons—always the toughest, eh, Chief?"

      Evidently Mr. Beale had not yet had time to read the London news, for the "Eames Case" had now become the "Erskine Murder."

      "By the way"—again came that swift baring of the teeth—"you haven't asked me yet"—he underscored the "yet" with a glance—"how I came to run away from the Enterprise without saying good-bye to anyone. Well, I'll tell you. I had just got up from my cozy armchair and made a start for bed when who should pass the window—I had opened it—but Green. Yes, Green, the man my paper had tried so hard to get in N'York and fallen flat over. He had an overcoat on his arm, and his grip in his hand, so I just whipped out of the window and followed him to a garage. Went in after him and arranged for a faster car than his little two-seater. Picked up his trail without any effort, for he had hired the machine and driver in Dover, and the man was to drive him back for the boat. I did the same. We crossed together, and I followed him here to Brussels. He doesn't know me by sight, so I laid what I thought was a first class trap for him. Everything went according to plan—except the end." He made a grimace. "Behold me minus the crook, my diamond ring, my pocket-book and my reputation for brains, to say nothing of my night's sleep. You see, Green knew all the time who I was, and I'm bound to say he's a