The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

soup, a dish of Tatar bitokes—savory balls of beefsteak and marrow and seasonings pounded to perfection and browned to a turn, a well-made potato salad, some crisp rolls, and a glass of light wine made Pointer ready for another stretch of work if need be.

      When the meal was cleared away by his landlady, who ruled the two men with her cooking, he filled his pipe from a beautiful covered jar of modern Japanese enamel where gold fish glittered among green waves. Jim's tobacco lived in a dull blue pot at the other end, and in the middle stood the room's one useless ornament, a carved Chinese ball-puzzle, fine as a birch leaf and showing ball within ball in tantalizing glimpses of color. It typified his calling to the policeman. He picked it up again and turned it gently to and fro.

      "Yes," he said ruminatingly, "get hold of your key and you'll open up all right. But how to get hold of your key—"

      "I thought the Meredith case was practically over," murmured O'Connor through clouds of smoke.

      "Finished at eight. I've another case on now, and rather a stiff one, or all signs belie it. It's a hotel case, and you know how I feel about them."

      "Still, old chap, you did very well with that robbery down at Ramsgate. It gave you your leg-up."

      There was nothing Pointer enjoyed more than talking his cases over with his friend, whose discretion was as much to be trusted as his own. Not that he often got an opinion out of the Irishman, but the mere reciting aloud of the various phases of a problem in itself helped to clear his mind.

      "They are the very devil all the same. You never know where you are. Take a private house—and the servants, the furniture, the rooms, the very walls can give you points, but a hotel! How can you follow up a hundred or so possible criminals? Personally, if I ever go in for a murder I should never dream of choosing any other place."

      "A murder case, eh?"

      "Did I say so? Well, see what you think. This is how things stand at present."

      He told of his call to the Enterprise and the results of the inquiry so far.

      "Why don't you think it's a suicide, what's wrong with that letter?" Jim handed it back. "You say the writing is the same as on the register."

      "By the same hand you'd think, but this letter's been written with an ordinary pen, same nib and ink as is supplied in the hotel bedroom, yet Eames had a filled fountain-pen in his pocket. He signed the register with it, why didn't he use It to write this letter with? It wasn't as if he had been trying to disguise his handwriting. Then the way he was huddled into the wardrobe looked as if his feet had been shoved in first and the rest of his body afterwards. You'll see what I mean when I show you Lester's photos on Monday. His coat and tie were half over his head at the back. And where is his trunk key? You might say that he got rid of his bag beforehand to save tracing his home, but he left the trunk. Then why not leave the key? And the things he had put into the wardrobe from his bed and wash-stand—pajamas, shaving-tackle, and that sort of thing—well, of course a man might lock himself into a pitch-dark wardrobe and then proceed to tidy all the articles neatly against the front, but it's difficult to see why."

      "Especially if he was drugged. Sure it wasn't an overdose of whisky? That would explain so many puzzles." O'Connor loved to impersonate guileless curiosity at these talks. It moved the Chief Inspector to a fury at times which the Irishman took as a tribute to his histrionic powers.

      "Any finger prints?" he asked after a moment.

      It was Pointer's turn to get even. He gazed on his friend as on a man past praying for. "Any fingerprints? How many things were there, do you suppose, that that American and the Manager between them hadn't pawed over? There was a regular finger-mark jam over everything. Now I'll tell you another thing. His socks and small things were in the two top-drawers. Nothing could have been tidier. Even his spare shoelaces had rubber bands to keep them trim. His underwear, in the top long drawer, looked as if it were ready for an inspection, but his things in the bottom drawer—two pairs of trousers and a coat—seemed as though they had been flung in during an earthquake."

      "Inference—someone was chiefly concerned in pockets." Jim was so interested that he forgot his role.

      "Aye, just so. His trunk was in the same muddle. And remember, no letters, no papers!"

      "You said his trunk and underwear were all oldish and all marked R.E.?"

      "They are."

      There was silence for some time in the room. Then: "I shall put a personal in all Monday's papers offering a reward of three pounds for any information concerning his watch. Thank Heaven, watches have numbers. That may lead us somewhere. Eames' clothes have a Colonial look to me, and his umbrella has a Toronto mark on it, but as far as I can see, the watch is our best chance to find out who he really is, and where he comes from. He entered himself as a dentist, but that pencil in his pocket was sharpened either by an artist or a draftsman of some kind."

      "What about the American?"

      "Aye, what about him? And what about the manager, too?"

      "The manager? You think he shares your opinion as to the advantages of a hotel for—let us call it working off old scores?"

      "I stopped on my way home to look up his record," Pointer continued unmoved; "it's his first job of the kind. But his father was manager of the Metropole at Scarborough. There's nothing against his character so far."

      "Ah, just let him wait till you have another go at him."

      "The Enterprise has always been a well conducted house under him."

      "Say no more," begged O'Connor, "his guilt seems piling up with every second."

      "I hope to trace that 'phone call on Monday."

      "Disguised voice making you think of the manager? Sherlock Holmes putting two and two together after having looked at the answer in the back of the book." O'Connor laid down his tool to strike an attitude.

      "The manager might have sent it, that's my only point so far."

      "And what about the American, the one you have your eye on because you think he threw his wash-water out of the window? What else have you ag'in him?"

      "He recognized Eames. Or at least he knows something about him, about his death possibly. I'll bet you anything you like I'm not mistaken. His control over his face is what you'd expect from a big newspaper' man, but just for a second, when he thought no one was watching, he looked down at Eames' face with—well, there was recognition of some kind in his eye, and a lot besides—a lot! I had my small looking-glass in my hand under my handkerchief and was studying him."

      "The Embassy seems a good reference. Perhaps he was bluffing when he gave it you?"

      Pointer shook his head. "I don't think so. Mr. Beale is a somebody all right, or I'm much mistaken."

      "You certainly ought to know the genuine article. You see enough of the imitation. And now I suppose some downtrodden underling of yours is keeping a skinned orb upon both these desperate criminals?" Jim got up and stretched himself.

      "They are that!" responded the other fervently.

      "Alf!" called O'Connor a little later from his opened bedroom door.

      "Well?" came in a muffled voice.

      "If it was Beale who searched those drawers why that jumbled haste? Sure he didn't need to fetch the manager till he was ready? Same brainwave applies to the manager and yourself."

      Pointer made no reply.

      "Another thought. If Eames committed suicide why fasten himself up in a hotel wardrobe. Why not choose a bench in the park?" persisted the seeker after enlightenment.

      The banging of the door between the two rooms was the only reply.

      CHAPTER II

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      POINTER