CHAPTER XVI.ReconstructionWhen Poole reached Scotland Yard on the morning after his perusal of Sir Garth’s papers, he went straight to the room of Chief Inspector Barrod. That officer had just arrived but was quite ready to hear Poole’s report before going through his own papers. He listened without interruption while the detective detailed his various interviews of the previous day and nodded his approval of therésuméof the evidence which Poole had compiled and now laid before him.“What’s your conclusion?” he asked.“I haven’t formed one yet, sir, though I have got an idea. My great difficulty is to see how the blow was struck—in the face of that evidence. Two good witnesses practically swear that no blow was struck in the scuffle on the steps, and yet it’s impossible to believe that that was an accident. I’m convinced that that fellow gave a false account of himself and was probably disguised. I wondered, sir, whether you would help me stage a reconstruction of that, to see whether it really would have been possible to strike that blow without anyone noticing it. I thought on the broad staircase leading up to the big hall; we ought to have the doctor to see that we hit hard enough.”Barrod agreed readily enough, but asked for an hour’s grace to enable him to clear his “in” basket. To fill the time, Poole walked across to Queen Anne’s Gate and asked to see Mr. Mangane. He had brought with him the “Company Board” jackets and explained to the secretary the conclusions he had so far arrived at. Mangane confirmed his belief that nothing significant was to be found in any but the Victory Finance Company file. Poole opened the latter.“Now, sir,” he said. “I’ve decided to ask your help. I know a little bit about finance generally, but the details of a finance company like this are rather beyond me. You probably know something about this already; perhaps Sir Garth consulted you. I’ve got no one whom I know better than you to consult. If I started nosing about in the City myself—cross-questioning these people—they’d probably shut up like oysters, and if there’s anything wrong the criminals would be warned. Anything you did in that way would come much more naturally. Now, will you help me? Will you look into this Victory Finance Company business and see if you can give me a line?—I can give you an idea or two of my own to work on perhaps. I expect you want to clear up this business of Sir Garth’s death as much as most of us; will you help?”A curious expression had come into Mangane’s face as the detective propounded his request; it ended in a smile.“I’ll be very glad to help you, Inspector,” he said. “I do know a little about this business. Sir Garth asked me to make some enquiries himself and I made an appointment or two for him that I fancy had something to do with it. I won’t bother you with details now; I shall be able to give you something more worth having in a day or two.”Thanking Mangane, Poole left the house, without—as he had secretly hoped—catching a glimpse of Miss Fratten. Returning to the Yard, he collected Dr. Vyle (by telephone) and three intelligent plain-clothes men and having coached the latter in their parts, sent one of them to fetch Mr. Barrod. Asking the Chief Inspector to represent Mr. Wagglebow; Dr. Vyle, Mr. Lossett; and one of the constables, Miss Peake; Poole set the remaining constables, Rawton and Smith, to walk side by side down the broad stone staircase, while he himself waited behind a corner at the top. The lights were turned out so that only the feeble daylight lit the stairs. When the two constables were about half-way down, with Barrod a few steps immediately behind and Dr. Vyle to their right rear, Poole came running down after them and, stumbling, bumped into the left shoulder of Detective Constable Rawton; as he did so, he swung his closed right fist with a vicious half-hook into the centre of Rawton’s back. With an involuntary, but realistic, “Ow!” Rawton staggered against Smith, who held him up and asked anxiously what was the matter.“Nothing, mate; only a 5.9 in the small o’ me back” said Rawton ruefully.Poole apologized profusely and then made swiftly off down the stairs and disappeared round a corner to the left, whilst the third constable, entering with gusto into his part, came and clucked round the other two in the manner he considered appropriate to a highly strung and imaginative female.“Well, sir,” asked Poole, returning, “any possibility of mistakes?”“Of course not; not the way you do it—much too obvious. You should . . .”“You have a shot at it, sir,” said Poole, slightly nettled at this reception of his best effort. “I’ll take your place. We’ll do it again.”“Could Kelly change with me, sir?” inquired Rawton anxiously. “He’s a single man; I’ve a wife and kids dependent on me.”Poole laughed.“General Post,” he said. “Doctor, will you take the lady; Kelly you be Sir Garth, and Rawton, you Lossett.”The reconstruction performance was repeated, with an altered cast. Chief Inspector Barrod stumbled at a point rather farther behind his victim than Poole had done, and fell with nearly his full weight against the back of Kelly’s shoulder.“Christ, I’m killed!” yelled that unfortunate. “What have ye in y’r fist, Chief?”Barrod chuckled delightedly and extracted an ebony ruler from up his sleeve.“That’ll leave a bruise all right—I’ll back mine against yours, Poole—and I’ll bet you didn’t notice anything more than the fall.”“No, sir, your body was between me and his back. But I don’t think that answered Wagglebow’s description of the accident.”“And I saw the blow, sir, anyhow,” said Rawton. “I’m sure Lossett, if I’m placed right, couldn’t have said that he was sure no blow was struck.”“I think I should have known he’d been violently struck, sir,” said Smith, who had taken the part of Mr. Hessel.The Chief Inspector looked nettled at the reception of his rendering.“All right, have it your own way,” he said. “How much further does it take us?”“If I might bring the doctor along to your room, sir, and have a talk?” answered Poole. “That’ll do, you three—many thanks for your help. Kelly if you’re really hurt you’d better show yourself in the surgery.”“It’s no surgery I’m needing, sir; ’tis a mortuary I’m for.”The man’s half-doleful, half-laughing face restored even Barrod to good humour.“I’ll come and take your last wishes when you’re ready, Kelly,” he said.A minute later the three men were seated at the Chief Inspector’s table.“I fancy it amounts to this, sir,” said Poole. “The blow wasn’t struck on those steps at all.”“And the Peake woman’s evidence?” queried Barrod.“Oh, she’s a looney. No, sir; I don’t understand what that affair on the steps means—I’m convinced it has a meaning; but I believe Sir Garth was struck where he fell.”Barrod stared at him in silence for several seconds.“Humph!” he said at last.“Now look here, doctor,” said Poole, turning to the surgeon, “how soon after he was struck would you expect a man in that condition to fall—struck as Sir Garth was, that is, on the danger spot?”“At once.”“But hemighthave walked a certain distance after being hit?”“A few steps perhaps—half a dozen.”“But surely you don’t exclude the possibility of his having walked further—from the Duke of York’s Steps to the place where he fell?”“I don’t know where he fell. I always assumed that it was a few paces beyond the Steps—you never told me anything to make me assume anything else. How far away did he fall?”“Thirty or forty yards.”“Good Lord, impossible! At least—wait a minute. If the injury to the aneurism was only slight—a very slight tear or puncture, so that the blood only oozed out, then he might have walked the distance you say before collapsing. If it burst on impact, he must have fallen within half a dozen paces.”“You can’t say which kind of injury it was?”“Not definitely now. It might have begun with a small tear and then become larger—it would look like a burst.”Poole stared at him.“And what are you driving at, Poole?” asked the Chief Inspector. “That Hessel himself struck Fratten?”Poole looked at his Chief coolly.“That’s jumping a bit far, sir, but we’ve no proof at the moment that he didn’t—only his own story.”“What about that chap at the House of Commons; didn’t he see Fratten fall?”“Smythe? He saw them walking in front of him, then a car came between them and when it cleared, Fratten was going down. He saw no blow—at least he said nothing about one.”“On which side of Fratten was Hessel walking?”“I don’t know, sir. Coming down the Steps, of course, he was on Fratten’s right.”“And probably was here. Find out about that, Poole, and also whether Hessel is right- or left-handed. Anyhow I don’t believe it. Hessel said, if I remember aright, that he had his arm through Fratten’s—Smythe can probably confirm that; he could hardly have taken it out and struck him a violent blow without someone seeing. We’ll assume the linked arms and the left-handedness for a moment; come on, we’ll try it.”The imagined scene was reconstructed. It required a noticeable effort on Poole’s part to strike the Chief Inspector in the back; it was hardly credible that such a thing could have been done, unnoticed—still, there was no absolute impossibility.“Check those points, Poole, and call for witnesses of the actual fall and death. Everybody’s concentrated on the accident on the Steps so far.”After giving the necessary orders for advertising for the required witnesses, Poole made his way to the House of Commons. Mr. Coningsby Smythe kept him waiting this time, just to indicate his own importance, but when he did come, was quite definite. He remembered quite well that the shorter man was on the right. Furthermore, he was sure that only one car had passed between them; he did not believe that the shorter man could have disengaged his arm and struck a blow during the fraction of time that the obscuring had lasted. The detective thanked him for his help, cautioned him not to reveal what he had been asked, and made his way back to the Yard.As he walked, he puzzled his brain as to the best way to find out about Mr. Hessel’s right- or left-handedness. It sounded so simple and yet, in fact, with the restrictions that the circumstances imposed, it was by no means simple. He could not ask either Hessel himself or his immediate circle of friends and acquaintances—the question so obviously implied a terrible suspicion. If Hessel had been a man who played games, either now or in the past, it would have been easier, but it was fairly certain that he was not. It would be quite easy to find out, by observation, whether he wrote with his right or left hand, but that would be no proof (in the event of his writing with his right) that he was not ambidextrous—many people use one hand for writing and the other for throwing a cricket ball. The brilliant detectives of fiction—Holmes, Poirot, Hanaud (not French, he was too true to life)—would have devised some ingenious but simple trick by which the unsuspecting Hessel would have been tested in both hands simultaneously. As it was Poole could think of nothing better than to put a plain-clothes man on to shadow the banker and watch his unconscious hand action. It was unimaginative, but it might produce a result.Back at the Yard, Poole telephoned through to the appropriate Divisional police-station and inquired as to the name and whereabouts of the police constable on duty in St. James’s Park at the point nearest to the scene of Sir Garth’s death on that night; he learnt that the man—P. C. Lolling—was at that moment off duty but would be back at the station a little before two in preparation for his next tour. Poole was just wondering what to do in the meantime when he was summoned to Chief Inspector Barrod’s room.“What’s this young Fratten up to?” the latter asked as Poole entered.Poole’s expression was sufficient answer to the question.“That chap that you put on to watch him, Fallows, rang up when you were out to say that Fratten had slipped him—a deliberate slip, he thought it was—the old back-door trick. What’s his game?”“Has he taken anything with him, sir—luggage?”“Fallows didn’t know—I asked him that; he’d rung up directly he realized that Fratten was gone. He’s gone back to Fratten’s lodgings now to find out about his kit. You must get on to this, Poole; I don’t mind telling you that I think you’ve given that young man too much rope—you haven’t pressed him hard enough. This business of Hessel’s now; what’s your idea there? What’s the motive?”“Not much at the moment, sir. He’s down for £5,000 in the will, of course—not much, unless a man’s desperately in need of money; I’ve no proof that Hessel is—but then I haven’t been looking for it. I’m going to now, though. I haven’t been through Sir Garth’s Fratten’s Bank papers yet; there may be a suggestion there, though it’s hardly possible that Sir Garth suspected anything wrong—he seems to have trusted Hessel completely.”“Well, I don’t think much of that line,” said Barrod. “Hessel could have found a better place than that to hit Fratten in—St. James’s Park’s a bit public.”“Exactly, sir; that’s got to be explained, whoever did it. But we must remember this—barring his son and daughter, nobody’s so likely to have known about the aneurism as his best friend, Hessel.”The Chief Inspector shrugged his shoulders.“Did you ever ask him if he knew?”“No, but I’m going to.”“Well, I don’t mind your following that up so long as you don’t drop young Fratten. If he slips you, Poole, you’re for it.”There was a knock at the door and a constable came in.“Young lady to see Inspector Poole, sir,” he said. “Name of Fratten.”The two seniors exchanged glances.“Show her in here,” said Barrod.In half a minute, Inez Fratten appeared. Her cheeks were flushed and her eye sparkled.“I’ve foun . . .” she began, but Barrod interrupted her.“Where’s your brother, Miss Fratten?” he asked abruptly.Inez stared at him.“My brother?”“I beg your pardon, miss; I mean Mr. Ryland Fratten.”“But what do you mean— ‘where is he?’ ”“Was he at your house this morning?”“No; no, as a matter of fact, he wasn’t.”“Or last night?”“No, he didn’t come to dinner last night either; as a matter of fact, I particularly wanted to see him. But he doesn’t live with me, you know; he’s got lodgings in Abingdon Street.”“He’s done a bolt, Miss Fratten; you’re not asking me to believe that you don’t know about it.”“A bolt! I’m quite certain he hasn’t! What makes you say he has?”Barrod explained.“Pooh!” said Inez; “that doesn’t mean he’s bolted, that simply means he’s fed up with being watched—so would anyone be. He’ll be at his lodgings tonight—probably at our house before then. D’you want to see him?”“I want to know where he is. You’d better tell him not to play that game again, Miss Fratten—if it is a game; it’ll be landing him in trouble.”“It won’t,” said Inez defiantly. “It won’t, for the simple reason that I’ve found the girl he was with that evening!”“What’s that?” exclaimed both men simultaneously.“Well, I’m pretty sure I have; that’s why I wanted Ryland—so that he could identify her. But it’s more than a coincidence that the one clue we’d got has led straight to the very place I’ve been suspecting.”She turned to Poole.“Who do you think ‘Daphne’ is, Mr. Poole?—the girl who threw herself at Ryland’s head and then left him kicking his heels at the very time and place that would make things look bad for him—she’s Miss Saverel, secretary of the Victory Finance Company!”
When Poole reached Scotland Yard on the morning after his perusal of Sir Garth’s papers, he went straight to the room of Chief Inspector Barrod. That officer had just arrived but was quite ready to hear Poole’s report before going through his own papers. He listened without interruption while the detective detailed his various interviews of the previous day and nodded his approval of therésuméof the evidence which Poole had compiled and now laid before him.
“What’s your conclusion?” he asked.
“I haven’t formed one yet, sir, though I have got an idea. My great difficulty is to see how the blow was struck—in the face of that evidence. Two good witnesses practically swear that no blow was struck in the scuffle on the steps, and yet it’s impossible to believe that that was an accident. I’m convinced that that fellow gave a false account of himself and was probably disguised. I wondered, sir, whether you would help me stage a reconstruction of that, to see whether it really would have been possible to strike that blow without anyone noticing it. I thought on the broad staircase leading up to the big hall; we ought to have the doctor to see that we hit hard enough.”
Barrod agreed readily enough, but asked for an hour’s grace to enable him to clear his “in” basket. To fill the time, Poole walked across to Queen Anne’s Gate and asked to see Mr. Mangane. He had brought with him the “Company Board” jackets and explained to the secretary the conclusions he had so far arrived at. Mangane confirmed his belief that nothing significant was to be found in any but the Victory Finance Company file. Poole opened the latter.
“Now, sir,” he said. “I’ve decided to ask your help. I know a little bit about finance generally, but the details of a finance company like this are rather beyond me. You probably know something about this already; perhaps Sir Garth consulted you. I’ve got no one whom I know better than you to consult. If I started nosing about in the City myself—cross-questioning these people—they’d probably shut up like oysters, and if there’s anything wrong the criminals would be warned. Anything you did in that way would come much more naturally. Now, will you help me? Will you look into this Victory Finance Company business and see if you can give me a line?—I can give you an idea or two of my own to work on perhaps. I expect you want to clear up this business of Sir Garth’s death as much as most of us; will you help?”
A curious expression had come into Mangane’s face as the detective propounded his request; it ended in a smile.
“I’ll be very glad to help you, Inspector,” he said. “I do know a little about this business. Sir Garth asked me to make some enquiries himself and I made an appointment or two for him that I fancy had something to do with it. I won’t bother you with details now; I shall be able to give you something more worth having in a day or two.”
Thanking Mangane, Poole left the house, without—as he had secretly hoped—catching a glimpse of Miss Fratten. Returning to the Yard, he collected Dr. Vyle (by telephone) and three intelligent plain-clothes men and having coached the latter in their parts, sent one of them to fetch Mr. Barrod. Asking the Chief Inspector to represent Mr. Wagglebow; Dr. Vyle, Mr. Lossett; and one of the constables, Miss Peake; Poole set the remaining constables, Rawton and Smith, to walk side by side down the broad stone staircase, while he himself waited behind a corner at the top. The lights were turned out so that only the feeble daylight lit the stairs. When the two constables were about half-way down, with Barrod a few steps immediately behind and Dr. Vyle to their right rear, Poole came running down after them and, stumbling, bumped into the left shoulder of Detective Constable Rawton; as he did so, he swung his closed right fist with a vicious half-hook into the centre of Rawton’s back. With an involuntary, but realistic, “Ow!” Rawton staggered against Smith, who held him up and asked anxiously what was the matter.
“Nothing, mate; only a 5.9 in the small o’ me back” said Rawton ruefully.
Poole apologized profusely and then made swiftly off down the stairs and disappeared round a corner to the left, whilst the third constable, entering with gusto into his part, came and clucked round the other two in the manner he considered appropriate to a highly strung and imaginative female.
“Well, sir,” asked Poole, returning, “any possibility of mistakes?”
“Of course not; not the way you do it—much too obvious. You should . . .”
“You have a shot at it, sir,” said Poole, slightly nettled at this reception of his best effort. “I’ll take your place. We’ll do it again.”
“Could Kelly change with me, sir?” inquired Rawton anxiously. “He’s a single man; I’ve a wife and kids dependent on me.”
Poole laughed.
“General Post,” he said. “Doctor, will you take the lady; Kelly you be Sir Garth, and Rawton, you Lossett.”
The reconstruction performance was repeated, with an altered cast. Chief Inspector Barrod stumbled at a point rather farther behind his victim than Poole had done, and fell with nearly his full weight against the back of Kelly’s shoulder.
“Christ, I’m killed!” yelled that unfortunate. “What have ye in y’r fist, Chief?”
Barrod chuckled delightedly and extracted an ebony ruler from up his sleeve.
“That’ll leave a bruise all right—I’ll back mine against yours, Poole—and I’ll bet you didn’t notice anything more than the fall.”
“No, sir, your body was between me and his back. But I don’t think that answered Wagglebow’s description of the accident.”
“And I saw the blow, sir, anyhow,” said Rawton. “I’m sure Lossett, if I’m placed right, couldn’t have said that he was sure no blow was struck.”
“I think I should have known he’d been violently struck, sir,” said Smith, who had taken the part of Mr. Hessel.
The Chief Inspector looked nettled at the reception of his rendering.
“All right, have it your own way,” he said. “How much further does it take us?”
“If I might bring the doctor along to your room, sir, and have a talk?” answered Poole. “That’ll do, you three—many thanks for your help. Kelly if you’re really hurt you’d better show yourself in the surgery.”
“It’s no surgery I’m needing, sir; ’tis a mortuary I’m for.”
The man’s half-doleful, half-laughing face restored even Barrod to good humour.
“I’ll come and take your last wishes when you’re ready, Kelly,” he said.
A minute later the three men were seated at the Chief Inspector’s table.
“I fancy it amounts to this, sir,” said Poole. “The blow wasn’t struck on those steps at all.”
“And the Peake woman’s evidence?” queried Barrod.
“Oh, she’s a looney. No, sir; I don’t understand what that affair on the steps means—I’m convinced it has a meaning; but I believe Sir Garth was struck where he fell.”
Barrod stared at him in silence for several seconds.
“Humph!” he said at last.
“Now look here, doctor,” said Poole, turning to the surgeon, “how soon after he was struck would you expect a man in that condition to fall—struck as Sir Garth was, that is, on the danger spot?”
“At once.”
“But hemighthave walked a certain distance after being hit?”
“A few steps perhaps—half a dozen.”
“But surely you don’t exclude the possibility of his having walked further—from the Duke of York’s Steps to the place where he fell?”
“I don’t know where he fell. I always assumed that it was a few paces beyond the Steps—you never told me anything to make me assume anything else. How far away did he fall?”
“Thirty or forty yards.”
“Good Lord, impossible! At least—wait a minute. If the injury to the aneurism was only slight—a very slight tear or puncture, so that the blood only oozed out, then he might have walked the distance you say before collapsing. If it burst on impact, he must have fallen within half a dozen paces.”
“You can’t say which kind of injury it was?”
“Not definitely now. It might have begun with a small tear and then become larger—it would look like a burst.”
Poole stared at him.
“And what are you driving at, Poole?” asked the Chief Inspector. “That Hessel himself struck Fratten?”
Poole looked at his Chief coolly.
“That’s jumping a bit far, sir, but we’ve no proof at the moment that he didn’t—only his own story.”
“What about that chap at the House of Commons; didn’t he see Fratten fall?”
“Smythe? He saw them walking in front of him, then a car came between them and when it cleared, Fratten was going down. He saw no blow—at least he said nothing about one.”
“On which side of Fratten was Hessel walking?”
“I don’t know, sir. Coming down the Steps, of course, he was on Fratten’s right.”
“And probably was here. Find out about that, Poole, and also whether Hessel is right- or left-handed. Anyhow I don’t believe it. Hessel said, if I remember aright, that he had his arm through Fratten’s—Smythe can probably confirm that; he could hardly have taken it out and struck him a violent blow without someone seeing. We’ll assume the linked arms and the left-handedness for a moment; come on, we’ll try it.”
The imagined scene was reconstructed. It required a noticeable effort on Poole’s part to strike the Chief Inspector in the back; it was hardly credible that such a thing could have been done, unnoticed—still, there was no absolute impossibility.
“Check those points, Poole, and call for witnesses of the actual fall and death. Everybody’s concentrated on the accident on the Steps so far.”
After giving the necessary orders for advertising for the required witnesses, Poole made his way to the House of Commons. Mr. Coningsby Smythe kept him waiting this time, just to indicate his own importance, but when he did come, was quite definite. He remembered quite well that the shorter man was on the right. Furthermore, he was sure that only one car had passed between them; he did not believe that the shorter man could have disengaged his arm and struck a blow during the fraction of time that the obscuring had lasted. The detective thanked him for his help, cautioned him not to reveal what he had been asked, and made his way back to the Yard.
As he walked, he puzzled his brain as to the best way to find out about Mr. Hessel’s right- or left-handedness. It sounded so simple and yet, in fact, with the restrictions that the circumstances imposed, it was by no means simple. He could not ask either Hessel himself or his immediate circle of friends and acquaintances—the question so obviously implied a terrible suspicion. If Hessel had been a man who played games, either now or in the past, it would have been easier, but it was fairly certain that he was not. It would be quite easy to find out, by observation, whether he wrote with his right or left hand, but that would be no proof (in the event of his writing with his right) that he was not ambidextrous—many people use one hand for writing and the other for throwing a cricket ball. The brilliant detectives of fiction—Holmes, Poirot, Hanaud (not French, he was too true to life)—would have devised some ingenious but simple trick by which the unsuspecting Hessel would have been tested in both hands simultaneously. As it was Poole could think of nothing better than to put a plain-clothes man on to shadow the banker and watch his unconscious hand action. It was unimaginative, but it might produce a result.
Back at the Yard, Poole telephoned through to the appropriate Divisional police-station and inquired as to the name and whereabouts of the police constable on duty in St. James’s Park at the point nearest to the scene of Sir Garth’s death on that night; he learnt that the man—P. C. Lolling—was at that moment off duty but would be back at the station a little before two in preparation for his next tour. Poole was just wondering what to do in the meantime when he was summoned to Chief Inspector Barrod’s room.
“What’s this young Fratten up to?” the latter asked as Poole entered.
Poole’s expression was sufficient answer to the question.
“That chap that you put on to watch him, Fallows, rang up when you were out to say that Fratten had slipped him—a deliberate slip, he thought it was—the old back-door trick. What’s his game?”
“Has he taken anything with him, sir—luggage?”
“Fallows didn’t know—I asked him that; he’d rung up directly he realized that Fratten was gone. He’s gone back to Fratten’s lodgings now to find out about his kit. You must get on to this, Poole; I don’t mind telling you that I think you’ve given that young man too much rope—you haven’t pressed him hard enough. This business of Hessel’s now; what’s your idea there? What’s the motive?”
“Not much at the moment, sir. He’s down for £5,000 in the will, of course—not much, unless a man’s desperately in need of money; I’ve no proof that Hessel is—but then I haven’t been looking for it. I’m going to now, though. I haven’t been through Sir Garth’s Fratten’s Bank papers yet; there may be a suggestion there, though it’s hardly possible that Sir Garth suspected anything wrong—he seems to have trusted Hessel completely.”
“Well, I don’t think much of that line,” said Barrod. “Hessel could have found a better place than that to hit Fratten in—St. James’s Park’s a bit public.”
“Exactly, sir; that’s got to be explained, whoever did it. But we must remember this—barring his son and daughter, nobody’s so likely to have known about the aneurism as his best friend, Hessel.”
The Chief Inspector shrugged his shoulders.
“Did you ever ask him if he knew?”
“No, but I’m going to.”
“Well, I don’t mind your following that up so long as you don’t drop young Fratten. If he slips you, Poole, you’re for it.”
There was a knock at the door and a constable came in.
“Young lady to see Inspector Poole, sir,” he said. “Name of Fratten.”
The two seniors exchanged glances.
“Show her in here,” said Barrod.
In half a minute, Inez Fratten appeared. Her cheeks were flushed and her eye sparkled.
“I’ve foun . . .” she began, but Barrod interrupted her.
“Where’s your brother, Miss Fratten?” he asked abruptly.
Inez stared at him.
“My brother?”
“I beg your pardon, miss; I mean Mr. Ryland Fratten.”
“But what do you mean— ‘where is he?’ ”
“Was he at your house this morning?”
“No; no, as a matter of fact, he wasn’t.”
“Or last night?”
“No, he didn’t come to dinner last night either; as a matter of fact, I particularly wanted to see him. But he doesn’t live with me, you know; he’s got lodgings in Abingdon Street.”
“He’s done a bolt, Miss Fratten; you’re not asking me to believe that you don’t know about it.”
“A bolt! I’m quite certain he hasn’t! What makes you say he has?”
Barrod explained.
“Pooh!” said Inez; “that doesn’t mean he’s bolted, that simply means he’s fed up with being watched—so would anyone be. He’ll be at his lodgings tonight—probably at our house before then. D’you want to see him?”
“I want to know where he is. You’d better tell him not to play that game again, Miss Fratten—if it is a game; it’ll be landing him in trouble.”
“It won’t,” said Inez defiantly. “It won’t, for the simple reason that I’ve found the girl he was with that evening!”
“What’s that?” exclaimed both men simultaneously.
“Well, I’m pretty sure I have; that’s why I wanted Ryland—so that he could identify her. But it’s more than a coincidence that the one clue we’d got has led straight to the very place I’ve been suspecting.”
She turned to Poole.
“Who do you think ‘Daphne’ is, Mr. Poole?—the girl who threw herself at Ryland’s head and then left him kicking his heels at the very time and place that would make things look bad for him—she’s Miss Saverel, secretary of the Victory Finance Company!”