The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

Merton, of Merton and Mertons, private detectives. There's my card; you can 'phone to my office and ask about me."

      The head of the firm in question was an ex-inspector of the Yard, and Pointer had made his arrangements. Keane looked at the ten-shilling note.

      "Hand it over then."

      Pointer cocked his head on one side.

      "Takes a bit of earning, does a ten-shilling note these hard times, my man. I might raise it to a pound if I could see into the room for a second."

      "You might!" ironically repeated the other, "and what price my place? Nothing doing!"

      "I might double that again if I could go over the clothes the young man wore when he came. I suppose he is a young man?"

      The ten shillings changed hands.

      "Can't say. How's that for honesty? I never saw him. The matron and Mr. Carlyle were waiting for the car, and got him on to the stretcher themselves. His mother helped them."

      "Was that usual? The house-surgeon and the matron being on the lookout like that?"

      "Not unusual, perhaps. But they've never made such a fuss before about not letting any one into the room afterwards. I happened to open the door by mistake, and that Mason snapped my nose off."

      "Severe case, eh?"

      "Not since the operation. There's been no call for ice bags, let alone the oxygen pump. But that stretcher was a sight! He must have all but cut an artery."

      Then Keane went off for the clothes.

      "Nothing doing," he said on his return "Blest if they haven't gone. To the cleaners and laundry, says the tag hanging in their place. But his shoes have gone, too! And a travelling rug, that I know came with him, isn't there. Fine and stained it was, too."

      Pointer got the name of the laundry and cleaners generally patronised by the institution.

      "When was the operation?"

      "Tuesday morning."

      The date was the first Tuesday after Rose's death. "Sister in charge of the theatre approachable?"

      "I don't think!" Keane made a grimace which it took handsomer features than his to carry off successfully.

      "Now, the man's mother, can you describe her?"

      "Tall and slender. Veiled like one of those Eastern Harems."

      "Came in a car?" Pointer asked

      "She did. What's more, she drove it in. I was a bit late coming in, and I happened to slip in behind it."

      "But if she was closely veiled, how did she drive?"

      "Well, that's funny, now you speak of it, but I happened to be going out of the gate when she drove off—to post a letter, you know—I again happened to see her meet a big stout man around the first corner. She got out and stood talking for a minute Then he put his arms round her and kissed her, and after that he climbed into the driving seat and they drove off."

      "Kissed her?" Something in his tone made Keane glance at him out of the corners of his eyes.

      "You seem struck all of a heap. He kissed her as though he meant it, too. None of your hit or miss pecks."

      "I thought you said she was veiled so tightly—"

      "Well, what of it? He kissed one cheek, veil and all, and looked as though he would have been quite pleased to kiss the other, but she stepped on into the car."

      "Did she seem to mind being kissed? Move away, I mean, or that?"

      "Not a bit. She sort of half-leant her head on his shoulder, like as though she were dead tired, you know, before she bucked up and got into the car."

      Pointer spread his photographs on the table.

      "Can you recognise him?"

      "That's him." The man picked up one of Colonel Scarlett. "That's him, right enough."

      "Could you swear to him?"

      "Till all's blue."

      "Good. Now I want something with the patient's finger-prints on it. A tumbler, how would that do? Could you manage to get me the one he uses?"

      Keane shook his head.

      "No more than you could sneak the King's sceptre. He's guarded night and day."

      "Guarded?"

      "Well, what do you think? Of course, Sir Martin is always careful, but over this case! I tell you that chap hasn't been left alone for a half-second. He's of tremendous importance to somebody."

      Pointer thought a moment

      "What is Sir Martin's general fee for head operations?"

      "Plain sailing ones, fifty pounds; dicky ones, a hundred. Not going to be done for the fun of the thing, are you?"

      Pointer was thinking of a cheque to "Self" that the colonel had drawn on Friday as soon as the banks were open. It had been for two hundred pounds, and he had asked for it all in Bradburys.

      Pointer dismissed the orderly and walked the floor, knee-deep in the detached facts of the case. They still refused to shape into that neat circle which alone means the true theory of a crime. Yet they were so numerous that he felt sure that the essential ones were here to hand, buried though they might be beneath accidentals. They could not all be tangents by rights.

      As he picked them up one by one, and examined and tested each afresh, he found that there was one fact told him, and accepted by him, which, if broken, would let all the rest link in one behind the other.

      Next morning he was as keen to be off as any belated burglar. The house-surgeon explained that there could be nothing organic the matter. Pointer refused the proffered arrangement with a home for nerve cases, and shambled into a taxi again, but this time with Keane's address safely in his letter-case.

      Back at Doctor Scott's, Pointer changed, and, well content, drove down to Medchester.

      At Red Gates he found Mr. Thornton, looking very weary of his work, and of his cottage, and of his life in general, walking up and down his balcony, an unlit pipe between his teeth.

      Pointer thought of his own words about Colonel Scarlett's face after reading the letter brought him at lunch on the day before Rose was killed.

      Thornton had said that his host had looked like a man who had learnt that something on which he confidently counted had gone all wrong. That description fitted Thornton's own face and manner exactly, as he stopped and nodded to the detective-officer.

      "To-morrow morning at eleven, sir, would you kindly manage to make time to come to my rooms at New Scotland Yard? I want to get the people chiefly associated with Stillwater House assembled in a sort of meeting."

      "Royal command? Or are startling developments expected?" Thornton asked caustically.

      "At eleven, then, sir." Pointer spoke as though the other had accepted with alacrity. "Unfortunately, I can't get the women's finger-prints. Mrs. Lane's, for instance. I suppose, by the way," Pointer threw in, "that you never met her before she went to Stillwater House?"

      "Never!" Thornton said the word before the other had finished his question. Yet Pointer knew from a short note that Watts had found among the colonel's papers at his club that Mrs. Lane had met Thornton before. It was a vague letter as far as dates or facts were concerned, but that was clear enough in it.

      Next morning saw Colonel Scarlett, Thornton, Bellairs, Bond, and Cockburn all wedged into the inner of Pointer's three official rooms, which was all but filled by a large table.

      Bellairs was a small, handsome man, with a face that Pointer would not have cared to trust.

      "Close fit," Bond commented, insinuating himself lithely into the back row.

      "By jove, it's a breakfast party." Cockburn bent over the centre of the table, where empty soup