The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

been put there by you. M. Meunier and two of his engineers give Mr. Carter an absolutely satisfactory alibi. They were with him all that Saturday afternoon and went down to Ostend in the train with him and saw him off on the boat. Those screws, these papers of Erskine's, and his note-book, look very ugly, taking into consideration the reason your firm had for getting Carter and Erskine out of the way, and the fact that you and the manager, together or separately, were in No. 14 for a considerable time on that Saturday afternoon."

      Mr. Beale's sallowness became tinged with green.

      "It's like a Sunday-school story," he said after a pause, "illustrating the way of the transgressor. I guess I know when the ice won't bear me. Chief, those papers and that note-book are Erskine's. You're right there. But I didn't get them off his dead body, nor yet kill him, either before or after. I bought them from the manager. Yes, sir, from the manager, and for one thousand five hundred pounds in notes. I had the sum on me, for I hoped to meet Carter and do a deal with him. Now, as to the motive—you're talking nonsense and you must know it. Carter was our man. Erskine staked him, but Erskine's death wouldn't have helped us any. It did quite the other way. We didn't want all that limelight turned on us, I do assure you. As to the screws—well—I, possibly I did let them drop into Carter's box by mistake. We wanted him fixed up a bit, as he wouldn't deal. Mind you, he only had to speak out to've left his prison the next day. If he chose to stay there that wasn't my fault. I guess he was afraid to speak, for if you really think Carter had no hand in Erskine's death—well, your brains aren't what I assess them at. As to my alibi...I spent the time exactly as I told you. Trying to locate Carter, who was in one of the Southampton Street hotels. I gave up trying to find his name, guessed that he was using another, and, acting on a belief of my man's that he had seen him go into the Enterprise, tried there. I took room number fourteen without an idea as to whose it really was, and the rest happened exactly as I told you, except that I lifted the top off the wardrobe after what I had seen through that knot-hole, but I couldn't see Erskine's face because it was turned sideways and downwards, as you remember. Also my torch had given out. Had I guessed whose corpse was in—but there...The match I lit I took from those vestas on the mantelpiece, and I dropped one into the wardrobe. I saw you salvage it, Chief."

      "Did you wash your hands in the basin?"

      "Sure, and threw the water on to the balcony. It looked as though I had washed my boots in it. The top of that wardrobe would have made a first rate flowerbed. Well, to continue my tale of sin, curiosity made me have a look among the dead man's effects. I carry a pass key because of that damned Carter. I saw nothing interesting, and went for the manager, whom I found prowling about outside in the corridor. He seemed fairly knocked off his perch, but I sometimes wonder—However, he certainly would have had to have a nerve to put me into a room with a murdered man, if he knew anything about it. Yet—well, I don't quite know what to think; he and Carter may have had an understanding of some sort."

      "Humph!" There was a long silence. "You hadn't been to the hotel earlier in the day, then?"

      "No."

      "Did you step out on to the balcony at all?"

      "Not once, but I thought I heard someone moving outside the window while the manager and I were talking, just before you arrived, and I pulled up the blind. As I did so I think a window clicked shut beside me."

      "Beside you? Which side?"

      "The Enterprise side. It sounded like the next room, but I couldn't swear to that."

      "Humph! How did you come to buy those papers from the manager?"

      Mr. Beale thought a while.

      "He offered them to me. I said that though I didn't know Eames personally yet I knew that he was mixed up in a business swindle. Said I'd be mighty glad, had I known who he was, to've had a look through his papers. He sat still a moment, then went out and came back with that pocket-book and those papers you have there, done up in a neat little green and white packet. Didn't say how he got them, and I didn't ask. No, sir, I didn't ask!"

      "Humph! Well, Mr. Beale, you've only yourself to thank for your position. I shall leave two of my men to accompany you till we look into matters a little more, and you'll have to stay in England."

      "Under arrest, am I?"

      "Not at all, sir. Under close supervision—at present. Of course, if you were to try to escape..." The Chief Inspector left the consequences to Mr. Beale's alert imagination; "but you'll find Watts here and Duncan know their work, and will cause you as little inconvenience as possible."

      "I see. Well, I know when a game's lost," the American retorted bitterly. "Say, you spoke of Carter's alibi just now. I suppose he's free, and all that?"

      "He will be by tomorrow"; and Pointer, after reading over Mr. Beale's account and getting it signed, made off for the nearest telegraph office, while the American looked after him with an ironical smile. "Carter to be set free tomorrow. Well, well, the brains of the British police!"

      Christine was the first to arrive in London, where she was met by a pale, gaunt-faced young man. Pointer, carrying the signed paper which Mr. Beale had staked so much to obtain, followed, and with him, though in a different compartment, travelled Mr. Beale and his valet.

      The Chief Inspector, after an interview with the authorities at the Yard, went on to the Enterprise Hotel. The manager was in, and he practically repeated his opening words to Mr. Beale.

      The manager might or might not be made of better stuff than the American, but he certainly was of softer. He sank back into his chair, looking as though he saw the hangman already entering his cell.

      CHAPTER IX

       Table of Contents

      THE Chief Inspector gave the manager no time to collect himself. He went rapidly over Mr. Beale's accusation that it was Mr. Hughes who had offered the papers of the dead man to him.

      "I'm in an awful hole." The manager poured out a glass of whisky and soda with a shaking hand.

      "Pretty bad," agreed the unsympathetic police-officer, "but perhaps it might be worse." His glance around the room pointed his meaning. The tumbler was set unsteadily back on the tray.

      "I'm a ruined man in any case. I might as well have thrown up the sponge when you came last time—"

      "Perhaps," murmured Pointer.

      "—but here's the true story. You can take it down, and I'll sign it here before we go to the police-station, or you can arrest me first and have it afterwards."

      "Let's have it here."

      "Well, the case was exactly as I told you up to that moment when Beale and I sat here after you had gone, talking over the suicide. I jumped up, for I suddenly remembered after all that Eames—I mean Erskine—had given me a cardboard box to keep in the safe. I had joked him about it, saying it looked like a box of chocolates, and he had said it wasn't much more important, but still he wished me to take care of it for him. Without thinking—for it is one of my strictest rules that I never go to the safe without the booking-clerk or the hall porter with me, and never in the presence of a visitor, I unlocked the combination and opened it. That shows how rattled I was by what had just happened. I pulled out the box—"

      "Wrapped in green and white striped paper?"

      "That's the one. And I said something about 'Good God, I forgot to speak of this to the police.' I moved towards the door when Mr. Beale stopped me. He was tremendously excited, and said that as soon as he. had seen Eames' face in the full light he had recognized him as a dangerous crook whose partner, and doubtless murderer, he (Beale) was after. In fact, he stuffed me with the same yarn he filled you up with when you arrested Carter."

      The Chief Inspector gave no sign that he felt the dig.

      "He declared that the box would contain plans and signals in cipher for the use of the gang. Would I let him have a look at it? I finally—well, I refused at first"—the