The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

to stir things up. As she went out she looked at him. Odd look. One I haven't a label for."

      "You'd expect that she and di Monti would be standing in together—"

      "Then that won't be what we'll find," Pointer said dryly.

      "And how's the pencil getting along?" asked the Irishman.

      "It's feeling a bit lonely, but still hopeful. So far, it's only led us into cul-de-sacs, but as it's my best find, I mustn't decry it."

      There was a long silence while the two old friends smoked on.

      "Could that formula be more valuable than you think?" O'Connor asked at length.

      "Our expert is quite certain. It's not possible for him to be mistaken."

      "True. One never did hear of a policeman making a mistake," O'Connor murmured pensively.

      "But unless the owner of the pencil turns up, I'm running over to Italy the day after to-morrow to see if I can't find Charteris."

      "You are, eh?" O'Connor eyed him gravely, speculatively.

      "And," Pointer returned his look, "I feel, like you, by no means certain that I shall find him."

      "Looks that way to me. If his daughter was killed for anything to do with a letter which he might have written or sent. And what's the artist doing all this time?"

      "Bellairs? He comes back from Windsor Castle tonight But I'm going to leave him alone for the moment He's watched, of course, but I'm trying to unwind the affair from the other end."

      "And the chief constable down there. How's he getting along?" O'Connor liked to keep count of all the cast.

      Pointer laughed. "I may be doing a most zealous officer a bitter injustice. But I suspect him of being exceedingly glad that he's out of it all. The colonel and his friends are all friends of Major Vaughan's, too. We'll see a marked improvement when this case is settled one way or another, I fancy. And it's going to take some stiff routine work before it's settled. It's the most extraordinary affair for one reason. You'd expect a gang of apaches to hang together, whatever the crimes, but the Stillwater crowd are all well-to-do, well-behaved, wellborn. They're not like a tenement house of starving east-enders."

      "Me noble father having been Court Chamberlain, and talking as I am to the belted son of a duke," O'Connor murmured lackadaisically, "it's natural we should look on tenement-house dwellers with proper scorn."

      Pointer grunted. "You know what I mean," he said impertinently. "Of all that Stillwater circle, there's not one, not one, mind you, of whom I can say with absolute certainty, 'Whoever's in it, it isn't he!'"

      "Him!" retorted O'Connor, "don't be a prig, Alf. You wouldn't say 'It isn't he under any circumstances,' and you know it."

      "It isn't he," Pointer repeated unmoved. Not to him had the English grammar come unprized, as a birthright. Son of a coast-guard, it was with many an hour's work that he had bought freedom in it, and he valued that ease accordingly.

      "And yet all of them should be above suspicion by their positions, you'd think. But they're all in it, in the most baffling way. There's the colonel—apart from everything else, why did he cut down that blackthorn tree before any one was up on Friday morning? But his record is quite all right. Late of the 10th Hussars. No shady relations. Only son's a Commissioner in Uganda. The last Tanganyka Times is full of some exploration of his around in the interior. Then there's Mr. Thornton—"

      "He called you down, didn't he? Ungrateful bobby!"

      "I allow him due credit, for, without his having done that, the threads of this case would have been impossible to pick up—from this end. There're always two ways of reaching any goal. But he's an odd fish. He's not straight with me. His hand, mind you, was practically forced by two young men from the Foreign Office."

      "But who is he?"

      "Took high honours at New College. Member of the bar. Councillor to various embassies abroad for some years. Travelled a bit in Persia. Knows everybody, and yet hasn't an intimate friend, unless it be Professor Charteris.

      "Then take Mr. Cockburn and Mr. Bond. We know all about them, too. Blameless pasts, promising futures. Yet I found them breaking into the colonel's study on Friday evening."

      "In order to help the case forward," put in O'Connor.

      "So they say! Then the women. Mrs. Lane's, of course, the dark horse of the outfit, so far. There's only one thing I can prove for certain against her, whatever we may think, and that is that it was from her silk cloak that the piece is missing which I found in the clutch of Thornton's car. As she wore the same cloak driving in to town on Friday, and made no complaint about it, and told the maid that she had just stepped on it while getting out, I take it that she tore it herself. Then there's Lady Maxwell. It's her frock that's bloodstained, and the colonel backs off at sight of her. Then Miss Scarlett—she's too much shaken by her cousin's death. She looks like a ghost."

      "You're hard to satisfy, Alf."

      "I try to be."

      "But who, in God's name, would shield the murderer of that lovely girl?" O'Connor asked. "You'd have thought the count would have had short shrift from every one down there. Do you think it's two sets of crimes? Jealousy that struck the blow, and then some other interest altogether? Something to do with the enclosed letter that moved the corpse and searched the bag?"

      "I'd rather not say what I think just yet, but the professor has some very important affairs bubbling along, apart from the emeralds."

      There was a short silence, then O'Connor paused in his work.

      "That man you're trying to get hold of seems to be an extra down there? I mean, the man of the summer house. I suppose he couldn't be the professor returned unexpectedly? Perhaps saw his daughter murdered, and went for the murderer?" O'Connor asked, half-sceptical of his own fancy.

      "I don't know," Pointer replied seriously, "but I do know that neither the professor nor any one else even remotely connected with what I call the Stillwater circle was the man inside the summer house bedroom. I've examined all their finger-prints most carefully."

      Back at the police station Inspector Rodman met Pointer with a face officially wooden, but with a very human satisfaction betraying itself in his voice.

      "Mrs. Lane's lost, too, sir. The detective from the Yard has just 'phoned to you to report as much."

      "She went into one of those all-over-the-place shops, and they haven't seen her since," moaned Harris. "Lost in London!"

      Pointer gave him a fleeting smile.

      "Sounds like the title of a film, and you might be the bereaved parent. She's not out of reach. On the whole, its possibly as well. We were getting a bit stale. Now she thinks she's safe, and she may send some message that will let us get hold of things more important still. And who are these in bright array?"

      It was Cockburn and Bond, driving up post haste. They had just learnt of the count's disappearance from his rooms in town, and were down to find out if there was still nothing that they could do.

      Harris, according to the immemorial rule of the Force, assured them that all had gone according to plan. The two young men looked as unbelieving as though they were hearing that time-honoured phrase in a battle report.

      "I'd got quite a step along," Cockburn put in disconsolately, "I mean finding out that his alibi was rocky. Not bad that for an amateur, was it?" He looked at Pointer for approval, and he got it very heartily. Cockburn had done quite well in finding out the shakiness of the much-vaunted alibi.

      "The count isn't out of reach," Pointer assured the two friends. "Safely isolated is the way to look at it. But if either of you could find out anything about the plans of the Inner Fascist Council in Rome concerning meetings, places, and so on, we might be able to guess where next to locate him. I don't deny that in matters of this kind, the Foreign Office naturally has a great pull over the Secret Service."

      They drove off quite full of how the