The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

at the Crillon. I'm afraid I don't just see my way to giving you my friends' names. You ask about me at the Embassy, Chief: they'll set your mind at rest."

      "Thank you, sir, but my mind isn't uneasy. All these questions are only part of the routine." The Chief Inspector smiled that cheery smile of his which the London underworld dreaded more than any frown. "And now, this afternoon—let me see, where did you say you were?"

      "The boat didn't get in till about five. The rest of the time till I arrived here about half-past six I spent in taxis driving from hotel to hotel. Anything else, Chief?"

      The Chief Inspector assured him that there was nothing else, and suggested that he might like to try one of the very comfortable chairs in the lounge, and that should he meet the manager would he mind asking him to step into his own sitting-room again.

      The manager's story was brevity itself. He told of Beale's arrival "about half-past six," his appeal to him to get him some sort of a shelter on such a night. "I believe he offered to share the dog's kennel provided the beast didn't bite. Incidentally, he told me who he was. Of course, I wanted to do my best for such a client, and thought of the only vacant room in the house,—No. 14. It was fresh in my mind, for I had been talking to the booking clerk when the 'phone came through saying that Mr. Eames would be away over the week-end. Of course as a rule we shouldn't dream of letting anyone else occupy a room under such circumstances, but—"

      "One moment: who answered the 'phone?"

      "The booking-clerk."

      "Thank you, sir. Well, so you took Mr. Beale to No. 14. Did you have the room freshly done up for him—I mean, fresh towels and so on?"

      "Of course."

      "And then?"

      "I saw him at dinner in our restaurant, and said a word to the head waiter, then I saw no more of him till he stopped me in the corridor and told me that there was a dead man in his wardrobe."

      "Could you repeat his exact words?"

      "'Excuse me, Mr. Manager, but do you know that someone's left a dead man in the wardrobe of that room you let me have?'"

      "How did he look? Excited? Frightened?"

      The manager thought a moment. "Excited, I should say, and trying not to show it."

      "And now you, sir, where were you this afternoon?" The manager sat up.

      "But look here, Inspector,—why, good God,—I thought it was as clear a case of suicide—" The manager's eyes were almost out of his head.

      "Bless you, sir, ten to one this is all only a matter of form. We always do it. Police routine, you know."

      "I see. Yes, I see." But obviously it took the manager some effort to focus his mental gaze. "Well, I was all over the place." He named his various movements.

      The Chief Inspector's pen flew over the paper.

      "That's all, thank you, sir. Will you send me the booking-clerk—unless I'm taking up this room?"

      The manager's one desire was that the Chief Inspector should stay in seclusion. Once let a suspicion get about in the hotel that the police were turned loose in it—he thought of them as he might have of the elements of fire or water—and gone would be the hum and stir as of a prosperous hive which rose from all around them.

      The story told by the booking-clerk was equally simple.

      "Eight days ago—on July twenty-fifth,—about noon, a young man carrying a bag had come into the hotel and asked for a single room on the first floor facing the front. None of these were free for the moment. He had refused to take another, had deposited ten shillings, and asked them to keep him the first one that should be free, giving his name as Reginald Eames. He was back about six o'clock. Meanwhile one had fallen vacant—number fourteen. He took it without looking at it, and registered."

      "All your rooms are the same price, I believe?"

      "Yes, all. Here's his entry."

      The Chief Inspector read, "Reginald Eames. Dentist. Manchester." He compared the writing carefully with the letter found on the dead man.

      "I shall want to have that signature photographed," was his only comment. "Well?"

      "Well, that's all. I saw him about a bit. He spent all his time in the lounge. This morning I met him at lunch in the restaurant. Seems funny that a man should bother with a meal a few hours before he intends to chuck the whole thing."

      The Chief Inspector was not interested in philosophic abstractions. "When did he lunch?"

      "I entered at half-past one, just as he was leaving. That's everything I know about the chap except that someone 'phoned up at five o'clock to say that Mr. Eames, of room number fourteen, wished to let us know that he wouldn't be back till Monday morning, as he was spending the week-end in the country with a friend."

      "Are you sure of the time?"

      The clerk shook his head. "Only there or thereabouts. It wasn't much past, for the five o'clock post hadn't come in, nor much before, for I come on duty at five after my tea, and I had just got back."

      "The manager was talking to you when the message came, I understand?"

      "Was he? Possibly. I don't remember."

      "You think he wasn't?"

      "I thought he came up after the post got in. But, of course, I may be wrong. One day's so like another."

      "But I understand that he, too, heard the 'phone?"

      "He might have done that—the 'phone is to one side of the desk—but I didn't see him."

      "Did Mr. Eames give any reason as to why he was determined to have one of the first floor rooms looking into the street?"

      "None whatever."

      "Were the rooms you offered him instead as good?"

      "One was better."

      "Has he ever stayed in the hotel before?"

      "No."

      "Sure?"

      "Quite. I came here when the hotel opened."

      "Isn't there a balcony running all along your front rooms on the first floor, and also along the rooms of the Marvel Hotel next door?"

      "Yes. Both hotels belong to the same management." The Chief Inspector seemed plunged in thought for a moment. "By the way, before I forget it, from which direction did the manager come when he spoke to you after Eames' 'phone had been taken? I want to get the whole scene clear in my mind."

      "From the direction of the stairs."

      "And now about the voice over the 'phone—it wasn't Eames himself, you think?"

      "Sure it wasn't. This sounded like an old chap with a cold in his head."

      "Wheezy?"

      "More than that. Funniest voice—sort of muffled—I should know it again anywhere."

      "A disguised voice," wrote the Chief Inspector.

      "Had Eames any friends?"

      "Never saw him speak to a soul."

      "Did any letters come for him?"

      "Not a card."

      "How would you say that, generally speaking, he spent his time in the hotel?"

      "Smoking cigarettes in the lounge. Of course we've had rotten weather, but I don't think Mr. Eames was out of the house for more than ten minutes at a stretch."

      "Did he go out often?"

      "Always after each meal. Acted as though he intended to live to be a hundred. And to think that all the time he meant to commit suicide! Why, he might have had any kind of a bust-up." The booking-clerk evidently considered that Eames had wasted a rare chance.

      "Now about Mr. Beale's arrival?"

      But