The girl from Scotland Yard
carefully removed the magazine and dislodged the cartridges from the
chamber, smelled at the barrel.
“It has been fired recently, I should imagine: it still smells of
cordite. Is this yours, Dawlish?”
“No, sir: I’ve never seen it before.”
“Humph!” The inspector sat down on the bed in exactly the place where
the girl had sat the night before. He looked round for Mrs.
Inglethorne, but that woman had vanished.
“Nobody told you about that hiding place?”
“No, sir.”
“Hello, Elizabeth!” It was Leslie’s interruption. The frail child
stood in the doorway, shyly smiling at the beautiful lady of her
dreams.
She whispered something that the girl could not catch, and Leslie went
nearer to her, took the two thin hands in hers, and, stooping, kissed
the pale cheeks.
“Tea?” she said with a laugh. “No, dear, I don’t think we want tea. It
was very nice of you to come.”
The child’s eyes were fixed on the table; they were wide open, and in
their depths Leslie saw a look of fear.
“What is it?” asked Leslie.
“That big gun,” whispered the child. “Mother had it this morning, and
I was so frightened.”
The sharp-eared Coldwell heard.
“Your mother had it this morning, my dear?” he said kindly. “Where did
she have it?”
“In the kitchen. A gentleman left it--a little gentleman with a yellow
face. Mother brought it into the kitchen and said we all ought to be
killed.”
She clapped her hands to her mouth with an exclamation of fright, for
only then did she remember the strict injunctions laid upon her.
Coldwell strode out of the room to the head of the stairs and called
Mrs. Inglethorne in a stentorian voice. It was a long time before he
had an answer, and then by the tremulous voice he guessed that part of
the conversation between himself and the child had been overheard.
“Come up here,” he said curtly, and Mrs. Inglethorne came lumbering up
the stairs.
“This pistol came to your house this morning. From whom?”
The woman’s mouth was dry with terror. She blinked from one to the
other.
“A gentleman brought it,” she gasped out. “He said it belonged to Mr.
Dawlish, and would I put it under the floor--without a word of a lie,
sir--if I never move from here.”
Coldwell’s gimlet eyes searched her unwholesome face.
“You told me you had never seen the pistol before. Who sent it?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know, sir. I’ve never seen the man before in my life--if I
never move----”
“You’ll move!” said Coldwell grimly. “And darned quick, if you don’t
tell me the truth!”
But to her story she stuck, swearing by numerous gods, some of whom
were unfamiliar to Leslie, that she knew nothing whatever of the
pistol except that it had been brought there by a perfect stranger who
she thought was a friend of Peter Dawlish.
To Leslie Maughan’s astonishment the inspector appeared to accept this
story, and to find nothing venal in the act of concealment.
“You did a very foolish thing, Mrs. Inglethorne. The next time a
perfect stranger comes and asks you to conceal firearms in your
lodger’s room, you had better notify the police.”
He slipped the pistol into his pocket, and looked round for Elizabeth,
but she had vanished.
“That lets you out, Dawlish,” he said. “At least, it does for the
moment. If I were you, I would make an inspection of the room and see
if there are other likely hiding places where stuff could be planted.”
He had a consultation with the local inspector, and then he and Leslie
walked back to their cab.
“You’ve let her down rather lightly, haven’t you, Mr. Coldwell?”
He gave her a quick sidelong glance.
“Minnow fishing never did appeal to me,” he drawled, “especially while
one of the big pikes is hovering around, and it’s the pike I’m after.
And if this minnow doesn’t lead me to him, I’ll be astonished.”
“You accept Peter Dawlish’s story?”
He nodded, as he helped her into the cab. When he had followed and had
slammed the rackety door and the machine was in motion, he explained.
“The detective who searched the house last night found that loose
board and the hole underneath. He might have missed the diamond rings,
but he couldn’t have missed the gun. Therefore I knew it had been
planted since. Peter might have put it there, of course, but the odds
were all against that theory. The true story was the one told by the
child. The little yellow-faced gentleman was probably one of the three
who attacked Dawlish.”
For the first time she learned of that surprising outrage which had
been committed in Severall Street the night Peter had visited her.
He admitted a little irritably that the case had gone outside his own
experience.
“Here’s a woman who has been masquerading as a man for the past
fifteen years, found dead, with an emerald in her hand, worth, at a
rough guess, a thousand pounds. She was shot at close quarters with
the pistol I have in my pocket----”
She gasped.
“You don’t mean that?”
He nodded.
“I do mean it. I’d like to bet a month’s pay that I’m right. You think
a murderer would be crazy to put the very weapon in the hands of the
police, knowing that the pistol has a number and its purchase can be
traced--unless it was bought in Belgium, which is extremely likely.
You haven’t seen Druze since she was found, have you? Well, I’m not
advising you to; all the details about her can be passed on. There’s a
big black-powder burn at the base of her right thumb, that is to say
on the back of her hand. First thing I noticed when I examined the
body was that powder burn.”
“How did that come there?” asked Leslie.
“She fired an automatic--five or six shots in rapid succession--and
got the backfire. One shot wouldn’t have burned her; it must have been
at least five. Look!” He showed his own hand, and a raw red mark,
faintly tinged with black. “I was firing an automatic this morning to
see what would happen, and I’ve got exactly the same mark as she has.
I’m only making a guess, Leslie, but my guess is that Miss or Mrs.
Druze was killed in self-defense; that she started the gunplay and got
the worst of it.”
Leslie caught her breath.
“Then where is the other body?” she asked quickly.
He stared at her open-mouthed.
“Other body?”
“She killed somebody first,” said Leslie quickly. “Killed or
desperately wounded. Such a woman as Druze would not carry a pistol
unless she knew how to use it. If she knew how to use it and fired
first, then somebody was badly hurt.”
The old man took off his hat and scratched his head.
“That’s the natural conclusion to reach,” he said, “and I didn’t reach
it! And why I didn’t reach it I don’t know! Just let me think this
out, will ye?”
The silence was unbroken until they reached Scotland Yard.
“I’m still thinking it out,” he said dismally as he stepped out of the
cab behind her and paid the taxi man.
There was a bearded man in the hall, doctor written in every line of
him. He was talking to the officer at the desk, and evidently Coldwell
was being pointed out to him, for he walked to the door to meet the
inspector as he entered.
“You’re Mr. Coldwell? My name is Simmson. I am Doctor Simmson of
Marylebone Road.”
“Yes, Doctor?” said Coldwell, politely attentive.
“A friend of mine has suggested that I should go to Scotland Yard and
report rather a curious circumstance,” he said awkwardly. “I have
never done such a thing before, and I’m a little at sea as to how I
should begin. But I have a patient who is suffering from a gunshot
wound, and I am not quite satisfied as to how she received her injury,
which is a slight one.”
Coldwell was all attention now.
“Through the calf; no artery has been injured. And really, I feel I’m
being terribly disloyal to a patient----”
“What is her name?” asked Coldwell.
“Mrs. Greta Gurden,” was the reply.
CHAPTER XI.
THE DOCUMENT
The apartment that Greta Gurden occupied was on the first floor of a
house in Portman Crescent. Hers was one of those artistic little flats
that reflected every taste but her own. She slept in a red lacquer
bed, ornamented by golden devils, a bargain acquired many years before
in the Caledonian Market, and renovated by her own hands. Life is
rather a tragedy for the lonely woman; there was a shadowy husband
very much in the background, but he had either run away from her or
was in a lunatic asylum or something equally unsatisfactory. She was
one of the thousands who were endeavouring to keep an expensive
establishment on an insufficient income. By profession she was a
journalist; edited a mildly scurrilous little paper called _Mayfair
Gossip_ which enjoyed a very limited circulation, and in truth took up
very little of her time. It was certainly not in the paper’s interest
that she fostered the delusion that her life was one of hectic gayety.
For she was to be seen occasionally at the most exclusive night clubs;
more frequently at less exclusive establishments of the same order,
her visitations being governed entirely by the wealth and taste of her
escort. And numerically she had many friends. Her expansiveness and
lack of reticence had been tersely and uncharitably condemned into the
vulgar word “gush.” Still, however it might sicken the more
sophisticated, it was very pleasant to those who discovered from her
for the first time how important or good looking or well dressed they
were, what taste, discrimination, or tact they displayed upon every
conceivable occasion, and how anxiously or impatiently Greta was
looking forward to their next meeting.
There were young men who took her out to dinner or to supper or to
dances. There were middle-aged men, fathers of families, whose hearts
she fluttered with the promise of adventure never to be fulfilled, who
escorted her to the less expensive places of popular amusement. There
were, too, women who hovered everlastingly on that no-man’s-land
between Suburbia and Mayfair, who courted her society and influence,
under the mistaken impression that she had the entrée to the most
select circles.
_Mayfair Gossip_ was entirely the property of Anita Bellini, and it
was an unprofitable concern, a fact Anita never failed to emphasize,
when Greta called on a Friday for her weekly stipend, her only regular
source of income. The princess was good to Greta in other ways. She
gave her an occasional dinner, a discarded dress or two, marched her
off to afternoon concerts, and employed her as a sort of unpaid
secretary. Occasionally, windfalls came the way of Greta Gurden--fifty
pounds here and there for some little service which she had rendered.
And she had always a use for the money. There were new curtains to
buy, a fascinating Chinese cabinet, or something that looked like a
fascinating Chinese cabinet, a carved ivory Madonna--a fair copy of a
master’s art. She had a passion for picking up entirely useless
articles. Her dining room was cluttered up with imitation oak.
Birmingham-made suits of chain armour, Benares brass from the same
enterprising city, a gutted spinet that served only as a sideboard for
the display of imitation Bristol ware. There was even a pair of
antlers over the doorway, and Greta was not above suggesting to her
awe-stricken visitors that the twelve-pointer had been shot by her
when she was the guest of the Duke of Blank at his little hunting box
in Inverness-shire.
She enjoyed the services of one who was charlady in the morning and
maid in the afternoon, and only to this unemotional lady was the real
Greta ever revealed.
Mrs. Gurden lay in bed with a bandaged leg. Torn between terror that
memory brought and fear of blood-poisoning and its horrible
consequences--among other duties she contributed the health notes to
_Mayfair Gossip_--she was a difficult patient.
Greta could not afford to neglect her daily duty to herself. Her face