CHAPTER XXIVLANE MAKES A CALL
Onthe following morning Lane’s own private car was waiting for him in Shaftesbury Avenue. He was expecting a message from a trusted emissary, to whom he had given the three photographs of Mrs. Morrice, and dispatched to watch the flat of Alma Buckley in Elvenden Mansions.
About twelve o’clock the telephone bell rang. Lane answered it in about as great a state of excitement as was permissible to a man of his strong self-control. At the first words his face lightened. Once again his instinct had led him right to the presumption that the wretched woman, crushed under the weight of her misfortunes, would fly for shelter to the friend of her youth.
“It’s all right, sir. The lady went out with another woman about an hour ago; they have just returned.”
“Good,” was the detective’s answer. “I am starting now. Maintain your watch till I come, it won’t take me very long to reach there when I get through the Piccadilly traffic.”
He got into the waiting car, drove along as quickly as he could, and halted at a spot a little distant from Elvenden Mansions where a full view of the block of flats could be obtained. A respectable-looking man was lounging about, who reported that the two women were still there. He was quite a discreet person, and one often employed by Lane on such errands. Not wishing to bring too many people into this delicate affair, the detective would have preferred to put Sellars on the job, but that would have been unwise, as the young man was known to both Miss Buckley and Mrs. Morrice, and might have scared his quarry away.
He dismissed his subordinate, ordered the car to wait where it was, and proceeded to Number 5. The door was opened by a comely buxom woman, whom he rightly took to be Alma Buckley.
“I wish to see Mrs. Morrice on very urgent business,” he said, proffering his card which bore his name, profession and address. “You will see from that who I am.”
The woman read the card, and her face paled visibly underneath the thick rouge she had laid on it. She scented danger at once and flew to that readiestresource of certain women of not too scrupulous a nature, a lie.
“No Mrs. Morrice lives here. I am the sole tenant, and my name is Buckley, Alma Buckley,” she stammered.
“I know quite well you are the owner of this flat, Miss Buckley,” replied Lane suavely. “But you will pardon me for questioning your statement. This place has been under observation by an employé of mine. You and Mrs. Morrice went out this morning together, and returned about three-quarters of an hour ago. You have not stirred from it since, therefore Mrs. Morrice is within.”
When she saw he knew so much, she abandoned the fiction and tried another tack. “It is quite true she is here for a short time, but she is too unwell to see anybody.”
“Her indisposition must have come on very suddenly then, since she was well enough to shop or walk about with you for over an hour. Come, Miss Buckley, let us leave this fencing, it will do your friend more harm than good. I wish to impress upon you, and through you upon Mrs. Morrice, that it is necessary I should see her inher owninterests, apart from those of other people. If she refuses to see me, her future will be jeopardized to an extent she does not at present realize.”
There was no mistaking the gravity of his manner. Miss Buckley was a strong-minded woman and capable of holding her own in an equal encounter. But she recognized that this calm, strong man was master of the situation.
“Come in, then,” she said, in a tone the reverse of gracious. “I will see if she is well enough to permit your visit. I must ask you to wait in the hall, I have no spare apartment to which to show you.”
Lane was not a man much given to unprofitablemoralizing, but as he stood in the small hall, he could not help reflecting on the awful havoc which a few hours had wrought in the fortunes of this wretched woman. From the splendid house in Deanery Street with its luxurious apartments, its retinue of trained servants, to this middle-class flat in which there was not even an apartment to which to show a visitor! What a descent! Truly the way of the transgressor is hard!
In a few minutes, Miss Buckley reappeared and announced that Mrs. Morrice would see him. She led him into the comfortably furnished room in which Sellars had interviewed her. The detective was favourably impressed by the air of decent well-being about the place: there was no evidence of straitened means. Still, it was a terrible come-down for the wife of a millionaire.
Mrs. Morrice was seated in an easy-chair, the marks of acute suffering plainly written on her ravaged features. She nodded slightly to him, and as she did so, the music-hall artist withdrew, closing the door after her.
“Your business with me, Mr. Lane?” she said in a very low voice. “Miss Buckley told you the truth when she said I was not in a fit condition to receive visitors. But I understand you have important reasons for desiring an interview.”
Lane wasted no time in preamble. Truth to tell, he lacked the wide charity of Rosabelle, and had no compassion for the woman who was ready to sacrifice Richard Croxton without compunction, also her niece’s happiness.
“As my card will have informed you, I am a private inquiry agent. It is through me that these discoveries have been made; the systematic sale of your valuable jewels to supply young Brookes with money for his extravagant needs; the fraud you and Sir George Clayton-Brookes have practised in passing him off asthe nephew of both. Since you left the house yesterday, serious as these things are, we have discovered something more serious still.”
At these ominous words he saw a shudder shake her body, but she uttered no word.
“I discovered the original memorandum of the mechanism of your husband’s safe, locked up in one of your boxes, securely as you thought; I have it in my pocket at the present moment. At last we have put our hands upon the actual criminal who purloined the million francs, the loose diamonds, committed the second small robbery, made some inconsiderable restitution in the third—the criminal who left an innocent man, Richard Croxton, to suffer for her crime, reckoning on the fact that the evidence was so strong against him that one would not be tempted to look elsewhere.”
He paused, expecting that she would show some sort of fight, say something, however feeble and unconvincing, in denial. Had he been dealing with a woman of the calibre of Alma Buckley, she would have lied and turned and twisted and fought him as long as she could. But Mrs. Morrice was made of weaker stuff. Rosabelle had been right when she said she had never regarded her aunt as resolute and strong-minded.
She was trembling all over. “What does Mr. Morrice intend to do?” she asked in a faint voice, and admitting her guilt by putting the question.
“This is his last word. Write him a full confession giving him ample details of the burglaries, and equally important, the actual truth about young Brookes, in what way he is connected with you. If this is done, secrecy will be preserved.”
“And if I refuse?” she asked in the same faint voice. But Lane was sure she would not refuse in the end.
“In that case, he will publish the facts to the world, and he will not give you one penny towards your support.”
Of course, Lane had not received any such instructions from Morrice, he was acting entirely on his own initiative, judging that he knew better than the financier how to wring the truth out of obstinate malefactors.
She rose. “Excuse me for a few moments while I speak to my friend. Mr. Morrice has you for an adviser, I have only her to consult.”
She was so broken down and unnerved that she almost tottered through the door which Lane held open for her. While she was absent he kept a sharp look-out on the hall from force of habit. But he was quite sure she would not attempt to run away. What was the use of flight? It would only supply additional evidence, if further were needed, of her guilt.
At the end of half an hour she returned, a little more composed than when she went away, the two old friends had had a long talk together.
“Sit down, Mr. Lane. I will sign any confession you like to draw up, on the understanding that it is shown only to the persons actually interested. I will answer truthfully any question you like to put to me, and give you all the details of my life since I left the village of Brinkstone.”