The strange countess
“I don’t,” she said. “There have been a number of accidents; do you
suggest Lady Moron is responsible?”
“I suggest nothing.”
“Then I’ll say good-night,” she said, and was passing on; but he
barred her way, and at that moment he must have signalled to the dark
figure in the background, for the tall man came forward.
“This is Sergeant Lighton, of the Criminal Investigation Department,”
he said, and then indicated the girl: “This is Lois Reddle. I charge
her with being concerned in the attempted murder of John Braime!”
The girl listened, thunderstruck, rooted to the spot.
“You charge me?” she said in horror. “But, Mr. Dorn----”
Michael Dorn made a signal, and the tall man caught Lois gently by the
arm. Within half an hour of the prison gate opening for her mother, a
cell door in a mundane police station closed upon her daughter.
Chapter Twenty
“And that’s that!” said Michael Dorn lugubriously, as he left the
police station in company with the tall officer.
“Lighton, I’m going to catch a real thief now, if my theories are
sound. And my main theory has something to do with an envelope which I
begged from a clerk at the Home Office to-day, and which was posted to
my address this afternoon.”
“Letter-box stealing?” asked the other, and Michael did not reply
until he had secured the cab that was crawling on the other side of
the street and they were seated.
“Let us say letter-delaying. I got on to this business owing to the
fact that all the letters that came to me from my stationer and from a
friend of mine in a Government office were unaccountably delayed
twenty-four hours in the post. After giving the matter some thought I
reached the conclusion that this coincidence was due to the fact that
they were both enclosed in blue envelopes.”
“How is Braime?” asked the sergeant.
“Better,” was the reply. “I had a talk with him to-night--he’s had the
shock of his life.” He chuckled softly, though his heart at that
precise moment was aching for the dazed and indignant girl who was
occupying the matron’s room, a large and airy cell, at the Chelsea
police station.
The cab stopped before Hiles Mansions, and the lift-man took them up
to Michael’s cosy flat. There were two or three letters waiting for
him in his letter-box. He took them out and examined them. Then he
went on to the landing and rang for the elevator.
“You brought these letters up?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What time did they arrive?”
“Half-past nine, sir,” said the man.
“There was a blue envelope posted to me this afternoon at
three-thirty. It’s not here. How do you account for that?”
The liftman looked past him.
“I’m sure I can’t tell you, sir,” he said, studiously avoiding
Michael’s eyes. “I bring the letters up as they come and put ’em in
your box.”
“You’re on duty from nine at night until nine in the morning, aren’t
you?” asked Dorn.
“Yes, sir.”
“You handle the morning and the night posts. Why is it that all
letters enclosed in blue envelopes fail to reach me until twenty-four
hours after they are due?”
“I can’t tell you that, sir.”
“Tell this gentleman. He’s a detective from Scotland Yard. And tell
him without hokum, or you’ll sleep uncomfortably to-night, my friend.”
For a while the man blustered and protested and then suddenly
collapsed.
“I’ve got a wife and four children,” he whined, “and there’s an Army
pension I shall lose----”
“You’ll lose nothing if you tell me the truth. Who employed you to
stop my letters?”
“A man, sir. I don’t know his name. If I die this minute, I don’t know
his name! He gives me two pounds a week to hold up all the blue
envelopes and the official ones. They’re not stolen, sir, they’re
always put into the letter-box----”
“I know all about that,” interrupted Michael curtly. “You’re wasting
your breath, man. Who is your employer?”
“I swear I don’t know him, sir. I met him at a public-house one night.
He kidded me on to this job. I wish I’d never seen him.”
“Does he call for the letters?”
“Yes, sir, he called this morning after the post came in, but I didn’t
give him the blue envelope because I hadn’t got it then. The postman
overlooked it and came back a quarter of an hour later.”
“The blue envelope? Which blue envelope?” asked Michael quickly.
“It is downstairs, sir,” whimpered the unfaithful servant of Hiles
Mansions.
“We’ll go down with you and get it.”
In the lobby below was a small cubby-hutch which served the porters as
an office, and from beneath a stained blotting-pad he drew out two
blue envelopes.
The first Michael recognised as that which he had written himself; the
second he tore open and read, and the detective-sergeant saw his face
change. Thrusting the letter into his pocket, he turned to the
frightened servant.
“What else came for me to-day? Come, across with it, quick!”
Without a word the man put his hand into the pocket of a jacket that
was hanging against the wall and took out a telegram, which had
obviously been opened and reclosed. Michael read it in a fury of
anger.
“Deal with this man,” he said and flew out of the hall, springing on
the first empty taxi he saw.
A run of ten minutes brought him to his garage. Almost before the cab
could turn round, the long black car was running out of London in
defiance of all speed regulations.
Midnight was booming from Telsbury Parish Church when the car shot up
to the entrance of the prison and Michael leapt out and pulled the
bell.
“The governor’s in bed, sir.”
“I must see him at once. This is a matter of life and death. Take my
card to him.” He thrust it through the bars of the grating and waited
impatiently until he was admitted and conducted to the doctor’s house.
The governor, in pyjamas and dressing-gown, was waiting for him in his
small study.
“Mrs. Pinder left at ten o’clock. Didn’t you send down for her?”
“No, sir, I knew nothing whatever about the release. The letter from
the Home Office giving me the information had been held up. Ten
o’clock? Who called for her?”
“I don’t know, I thought it was you. I saw the car and didn’t trouble
to make enquiries.”
“Do you know which way they went?”
“They turned towards the London road. The car was a small saloon--a
Buick, I think, with an enclosed drive. Hasn’t she turned up?”
Michael shook his head.
“No, she’s not in London.”
There was no time to be lost. He got into his machine and flew back
along the London road. At the junction of the Telsbury by-road was a
filling station, and he knew that an attendant slept upon the
premises. It was some time before he could get an answer to his
knocking, and then he was rewarded with valuable information.
“I saw the machine pass. It went south, towards Letchford.”
“It didn’t take the London road?”
“No, sir, it turned there.” He pointed. “I could see the rear light
going up over the hill. It was just before I closed down for the
night.”
Michael got back into his car, and, opening out, flew over the hill
and covered the fifteen miles that separated Telsbury from Letchford
in exactly fifteen minutes. Here again he was in luck. One of the town
police had seen the machine; it had taken the westerly road. But
thereafter his fortune failed him, for he came to a place where four
roads met, and there was no trail that could help him determine which
route the unknown driver had chosen. They were not bound for London at
any rate. He tried one road without success; worked across country to
intercept the second, but could meet nobody who had the slightest
information to offer.
At four o’clock in the morning a weary man brought his machine to a
standstill before the Chelsea police station and went slowly up the
steps into the charge-room.
“Hullo, Mr. Dorn!” said the sergeant. “The superintendent’s been
looking for you all night about that charge.”
“Well, what about it?” asked Michael drearily.
“There’s going to be the devil to pay. It appears that the countess
says the girl wasn’t in the room when Braime was hurt. We’ve had a
full statement from her in writing, and the superintendent says he’s
got something to say to you that you won’t forget in a hurry!”
Dorn’s lip went back in an angry snarl.
“If he should say anything that’s worth remembering I’ll go out of
business,” he said. “Anyway, you can release her. I’d like to offer my
apologies.”
“Let her out!” laughed the sergeant. “You’re a bit late. She was
released at one o’clock this morning.”
Dorn’s eyes narrowed.
“Released at one o’clock this morning?” he said softly. “Did she go
away by herself?”
“No, sir, she did not. A gentleman called for her in a blue Buick.”
Michael Dorn staggered back; his face was drawn and haggard. Of a
sudden he seemed to have grown old.
“The man who released that girl may be an accessory to murder!” he
said. “Tell your superintendent that when you see him!”
And, turning on his heel, he left the charge-room.
The Public Prosecutor’s office opened at ten o’clock, and Michael Dorn
was waiting for him, a dusty, unshaven, grimy figure, when that
official arrived.
“Hullo, Dorn! What is wrong?” he asked, and, in as few words as
possible, the detective explained the position.
The Prosecutor shook his head.
“We can do nothing. You haven’t the evidence we want, and no charge
would lie. We’ve given you the freest hand, in view of all the
remarkable circumstances of the case, but I cannot consent to a
warrant for arrest until you bring me proof positive and undeniable.”
Michael Dorn bit his lip thoughtfully.
“In the old days, when they couldn’t get a man to tell the truth, what
did they do with him, Sir Charles?”
“Well,” said the other drily, “they tried something with boiling oil
in it! Those were the days when criminal investigation was a little
easier than it is now.”
“No easier.” Michael shook his head. “I’m going to get the truth. I’m
going to find out where they have taken these two women. And the rack
and the thumbscrew will be babies’ toys compared with what I will use
against them! I’ll have the truth if I have to pull Chesney Praye limb
from limb!”
Chapter Twenty-one
Lois was wakened from an exhausted sleep by the opening of the cell
door; she got up unsteadily, not quite knowing what she was doing, and
followed the matron to the charge-room, dizzy with sleep, inert from
the very shock of the charge levelled against her. She heard the
desk-sergeant say something, and dimly heard the name of the countess.
And then somebody shook hands with her; she thought it was the
sergeant. And a young man, who had appeared and disappeared in her
focus of vision and had not entered into recognition, took her arm and
led her slowly into the dark street. He jerked open the door of a car,
and, before she knew what was happening, had set the car in motion.
She experienced a pleasant sensation of languor--her head drooped.
It was the bump of her forehead against the driver’s seat that wakened
her. It was nearly daybreak.
“Where are we?” she asked.
She was uninterested in the identity of the driver, but, as he turned
his head to answer her, she saw that it was the red-faced man, Chesney
Praye.
“It’s all right, Miss Reddle,” he said, showing his big teeth in a
grin; “I’m taking you down into the country.”
She frowned, trying to remember clearly the events of the night
before. She was still dazed with sleep, then she recalled her arrest
and became wide awake. Before she could ask any further questions, he
was explaining over his shoulder.
“Her ladyship thought you’d better be kept out of the way of that
sleuth for a day or two. He’s got a grudge against you, and he’s a
vindictive beast.”
“Mr. Dorn?” she asked. “Why did he arrest me? I knew nothing whatever
about Braime’s injury.”