CHAPTER XXTHE FINGER-PRINT
WhenSir Frank Tarleton walked into the room on his return from Paris the first thing he did was to put his gold repeater to his ear and make it ring out its musical notes. It was the sign of triumph.
He told me everything just as I have described it. Then he transfixed me with a question.
“I expect you to be as candid with me as Mrs. Neobard has been. Did you put this poison into Wethered’s cup along with the opium?”
It was no more than I ought to have expected; no more than I had deserved. But it gave me a greater shock than I could have thought possible.
“Before God I am innocent of that!” I swore.
My chief received my oath without any indication of belief or disbelief.
“I don’t blame you for anything else you did on behalf of Lady Violet,” he said gravely. “Even if you hadn’t been in love with her, as a man you could do no less than you did to save her from such a scoundrel. You were right to drug him and right to destroy his case-book. But you had no right to take his life.”
I looked him in the face. I was too proud to repeat my denial.
“That has been my greatest anxiety in the wholebusiness, Cassilis. I liked you; you knew it, and I think you should have confided in me.”
“It wasn’t my secret,” I pleaded.
“I suppose that was the reason: yes, I accept that. It was a mistake, though, because you had no chance of keeping the secret. That is partly why I think it better for you to drop this kind of work and go in for private practice. You lack the first essential for a detective, my dear fellow; you can hold your tongue, but you can’t hold your face.”
I’m afraid I couldn’t hold it then. It blushed in spite of me.
“I am a light sleeper, Cassilis, as you ought to know. The telephone bell woke me some minutes before you came into the house that first night. You moved as quietly as a mouse as soon as you heard it, but you see I was listening before it rang the second time and I had heard you come up to the front door and open it.”
How silly all my precautions seemed now! My chief rubbed it into me with a touch of good humour.
“I gave you a hint that you might as well make a clean breast of it at once, but you didn’t take it. When you came in to me with Charles’s message your face showed me that you had something more on your mind than having gone out without letting me know. And you gave yourself away when you told me that you had been taken to the Domino Club by a Captain Smethwick. There is no such name in the Army List.”
Blunder after blunder, he recounted them all. The theft of the case-book had pointed to the thief being a doctor. The omission of Violet’s name from the list I had copied supplied the key to my motives, and my attack on Sarah Neobard left no doubt that I was in love with the girl she had denounced. My kind-hearted chief had willingly lent himself to my plans for meeting Violet at Tyberton, though he had tried to let me see he was not quite blind. He had followed the history of the Zenobia costume easily enough. And Violet’s refusal to give up the name of her champion had told him more than it had told poor, dull-witted me.
“That is my best reason for advising you to start in practice for yourself, my boy. Consider what your prospects are with me. I am at the top of the tree now and my salary is a bare £1,500 a year. And if I make another £500 by my private work it’s as much as I make. That’s not enough for an earl’s daughter to look forward to. You will make double as a fashionable doctor. You have the most valuable gift of all for the medical profession. You are a good listener. The people who will come to you, the patients who really bring in money, don’t want to be cured. They like to fancy they are ill and they want to talk about themselves. Let ’em do it and charge them for it. With my influence and Lord Ledbury’s you won’t have long to wait.”
I could only shake my head sorrowfully. “Youare very good, sir; you are kinder to me than I deserve. But I have no right to think that Lady Violet will ever marry me.”
Sir Frank gave me a queer look.
“Then I tell you this—if you don’t marry her,I will.”
Before I could recover from the start given me by this threat he was consulting his watch again.
“Charles ought to be here by this time. And I think he is. I shall be glad if you will come with us, Cassilis. We are going to the Domino Club.”
I followed him thankfully into the hall, to meet Inspector Charles and a quietly dressed Frenchman who was briefly introduced to me as Brigadier Samson. I took the invitation to go with them as a token that my chief had acquitted me in his own mind at least. I was ignorant whether I ever had been under suspicion in the Inspector’s, and I am so still.
We drove to the Club in the taxi that had brought the two police officers. We found it looking much more cheerful than on the last occasion. The new proprietress had evidently determined to make it a greater success than ever, in spite of the little cloud that had fallen on it. There were signs of renovation going on in the hall and new decorations had been put up in the ball-room.
The door was opened to us by the waiter Gerard, who looked as amiable as ever, but rather more subdued. The respectful glance he gave to CaptainCharles seemed to tell of some intelligence between them. Gerard was closely followed by another man whose salute showed me that he was one of the Inspector’s staff, in charge of the premises.
When Gerard, who had left us in the ball-room, returned to say that Madame Bonnell was ready to receive us, the French detective retained his seat. The other three of us were conducted into a smartly furnished parlour in which we found Madame enthroned in all the dignity of her new position. She had put on mourning for her late employer, but it was the sort of mourning a good modiste knows how to make a softener of grief rather than a perpetuation of it.
Madame Bonnell showed no trace of nervousness at our appearance. Like a good general, she had gauged her enemy in advance, she had anticipated his attack, and her plans of defence had been skilfully laid out. She received us in the manner of a courteous business woman who was only anxious to do whatever was asked of her.
I was conscious that my chief’s keen eyes were on the look-out for any sign of recognition between Madame and me, as I came into the room. Fortunately she scarcely noticed me, and I think her indifference must have finally satisfied him that we were strangers to each other.
He came straight to the point.
“We have called on you, Madame, in consequence of the advertisement from Messrs. James, Halliday & James.”
She heard this with composure. “What advertisement is that?”
Tarleton ignored the affectation of ignorance.
“It may save time to tell you that every person known to have been in correspondence with Dr. Weathered has been warned to take no notice of that advertisement.” It was evidently news to her that the names of the correspondents were known to the police, and she looked less confident already. “Mr. Stillman has been informed that Dr. Weathered’s executrix is the sole person entitled to deal with the letters, and he has now consented to allow a detective officer to sit in his outer office and refer any persons who may answer the advertisement to me. The same officer is opening all letters addressed to the firm.”
By this time Madame Bonnell must have made up her mind that she had little chance of making anything out of the letters and that it was better for her to sacrifice them if she could do so without damage to herself.
“What has all this to do with me?” she asked cautiously.
“Mrs. Weathered informs me that she placed the letters in your possession and I am here to ask you for them.”
Madame Bonnell did some hard thinking and did it quickly, too.
“Mrs. Weathered is a madwoman. She is not responsible for her actions, and her word is not to be believed. I am surprised that you should expectme to take such a story seriously. If you believe I have the letters, look for them.”
It was a gallant last stand. She must have known that every inch of the premises had been searched already.
Tarleton smiled at her. He was beginning to warm to his work.
“If I am to take advantage of that permission, Madame, I shall have to ask you to accompany me to Newgate Street, where there is a female searcher. You probably carry the letters about with you.”
A sudden spark, a very ugly and dangerous spark, was kindled in the woman’s eyes at the mention of a female searcher. It went out again instantly. Madame folded her arms.
“If you believe what you say, it makes no difference. You say that Mrs. Weathered gave me those letters. Why isn’t she here to ask for them back? I have a right to keep them till she does.”
This was true, unfortunately. But Madame had just been betrayed into revealing her weak point, about which the representative of the Home Office had been pretty confident before. He now turned to Inspector Charles.
“I am afraid I must leave the matter to you, Inspector.”
Captain Charles was quite ready.
“I must ask you to consider yourself my prisoner, Madame. The charge is one of conspiring with Arthur Stillman to obtain money from variouspersons by threats. Whatever you may say will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you.”
She didn’t wait for the production of the official note-book. Her hands were at the bosom of her dress.
“That charge is false and you know it. It is you who are using threats to obtain these letters, to which you have no claim. You are breaking the law, not I.”
She was right, that was the amazing part of it, entirely right. But she handed over the letters. And she contrived to look rather anxious.
“Let me tell you that I only consented to receive those letters from Mrs. Weathered because I saw she was a dangerous woman and I wanted to prevent her from doing mischief. I meant to return them to the writers the moment I knew who they were. In my position I couldn’t afford to do otherwise. I had to think of the reputation of the Club.”
Against this there was nothing to be said. It was the second line of defence, of course. Tarleton was not the man to waste time in assailing it.
“Mrs. Weathered tells me she gave you something else beside those letters.”
Madame Bonnell needed no preparation to meet this blow, which she had clearly been expecting. She heaved a sigh, apparently one of relief.
“Ah, I am glad she has confessed that! It has been a burden on my mind. I ought to have denouncedher, I suppose, but I saw she was out of her mind, and I was sorry for her. I thought it would be enough if I took the poison from her and kept it in a safe place.”
This was neater than even Tarleton had expected. I saw positive respect in his eyes.
“Then you have the poison still, Madame, untouched?”
“But yes. I placed it among my little aids to the toilet. You will find it in the cupboard you locked up, you remember.”
“Perhaps you will oblige me by fetching it. Inspector Charles will unlock the door for you.”
The Inspector’s face fell as he rose to escort her. Perhaps he thought that Sir Frank was being deceived. They came back together, Charles carrying the little bottle, which he silently handed to the specialist.
Tarleton went through the form of wetting his forefinger, taking up a few grains of the gray powder and tasting it. His face told nothing.
“The powder now in this bottle is a harmless mixture of charcoal and common salt. The poison that killed Dr. Weathered was upasine.”
Madame Bonnell raised her hands in admirable despair.
“Mille tonnorres!That wretched woman was more mad than I thought. She mistook this stuff for—what did you say, sir?”
The physician shook his head. “You do her aninjustice. I have tested her story and I feel no doubt that she placed the real poison in your hands. I have seen the person from whom she took it and from whose brother I obtained some of it myself.”
Again the first line of defence, a rather flimsy one, had been broken through. The second line was instantly unveiled.
“I have been robbed, then, that is what you mean? Some wretch has stolen the drug and filled up the bottle again to deceive me.”
“It looks like that, certainly.” Could I believe that this was Tarleton speaking? His voice remained perfectly steady as he went on. “Unfortunately, one of the Club servants, named Gerard, has told the police a different tale.”
All at once Madame Bonnell turned very white. She began breathing in spasms.
“His story is that you threw out hints to him that Dr. Weathered was in danger of being poisoned, as you pretended, by enemies of his in the Club. At a later time you bribed Gerard to say that the doctor himself was afraid, and had given him instructions to watch over his drinks. What really happened was that your continued hints made Gerard watchful, and on the fatal night he did see something dropped in the doctor’s cup by a dancer whom he described correctly. We know that it was a harmless dose of opium, a drug to which Weathered was immune, because he was taking it. Gerard reported what he had seen to you and you thereupon told himthat it was what you had feared but that you had an antidote. You put this antidote, as you called it, into a fresh cup of coffee, and made him take it to the doctor. There is no doubt in my mind that he died in consequence of drinking it.”
Madame Bonnell’s perfect composure was gone. That angry spark had come back into her eyes to remain there. She clenched her teeth, and her words came through them like the click of castanets.
“Gerard is a bloody liar.”
The next instant she recollected herself. She had still a third line of defence, a really good one this time.
“Are you going to tell that story to the world? Aha! I can tell stories, too. I shall have a fine tale to tell about His Royal Highness the Crown Prince of Slavonia; yes, yes. I shall tell how His Highness came to dance with poisoners and prostitutes, and people whose minds were fouler than any sink; and saw a murder committed under his eyes by his partner in the dance. Is it not so? And I shall recite much from all those letters I have read. I have a good memory, and I recite well.”
Tarleton acknowledged the strength of this position.
“You are correct in thinking that the British authorities have reasons for not taking proceedings against you. Therefore, they propose to let you return to your own country.”
“And give up my Club? Abandon my good fortuneat its height? I am not a very great fool, Sir Frank Tarleton.”
My chief raised a finger. Captain Charles sounded his whistle and Brigadier Samson stepped through the door.
Slowly the woman recoiled on herself, seeming actually to grow smaller in the act. The Brigadier gave her a careless nod.
“You have dyed your hair, Leonie Marchand, since I saw you last, but you haven’t changed your finger-print, you know. And you are still wanted for the murder in the Rue Lausanne.”
It was not a woman, it was a wild cat that sprang at Sir Frank with tearing nails and spitting teeth. I was just too late, but the French detective who knew the nature of the animal, was just in time; and he wasn’t hampered by any false sentiment. His methods were not particularly pleasant to watch, but they were effective. I think Charles rather envied him.
The methods of the French criminal courts also seem to be effective. At all events when I read the newspaper report of the trial at which Leonie Marchand was sentenced to imprisonment for life, it contained no hint of any scandal about any royal personage.
Sir Frank Tarleton was none the worse for the little shock he had experienced, and for which he rather blamed himself afterwards. He ought not to have waited to see the arrest, he admitted to me, buthe couldn’t resist the temptation to see the real woman come out. He hadn’t liked the sight.
“It lay between Madame and you from the first, as far as I could see,” he explained to me, as we were walking away together down Tarifa Road. “I never believed the waiter’s story for a moment. The idea that a man who knew his life to be in danger would go on coming to the Club and trust to a foreign waiter to prevent him from being poisoned, was ridiculous in my eyes. It was clear that the story had been put into his mouth by someone; and when Madame told a similar story, about Weathered having asked her to pour out his drinks herself, it was easy to see who was the inventor. It was a case of cleverness over-reaching itself. The theory that Weathered had been poisoned by one of his patients whom he was blackmailing was quite plausible in itself; as we know, it was very nearly being the true theory. If she had left it there and confined herself to saying what she said to Mrs. Weathered, that she knew he had enemies in the Club who would be glad of his death, I might not have suspected her. But when she took such pains to represent the whole place as a nest of assassins with herself and Gerard as guardian angels watching over the threatened man, I began to smell a rat.
“I had no suspicion of Mrs. Weathered; I don’t see how I could have had at that stage. Madame Bonnell’s motives were just what would make a woman of her stamp commit a crime. Sarah Neobard put itin a nutshell when she said she was a woman who would do anything for money. The Domino Club was doing well, and Weathered wasn’t necessary to it any longer. In fact, he was beginning to be in the way. She spoke the truth, probably, in saying that she lived in fear of a scene of some kind. At the same time, I doubt if she would ever have ventured to poison him herself if the means hadn’t been put into her hands. Here is the real murderer.”
He took out the little bottle, which he had brought away with him. It was square-shaped and made of ground glass, the sort of bottle in which smelling salts are sold.
“I look on this case throughout as one of murder by suggestion. Armstrong did very wrong to leave this bottle in his sister’s possession. The very precautions she took to keep it safely, as she thought, show that her mind was exercised by it. I shouldn’t wonder at all if Weathered, who was a clever man in his way, actually did detect some latent fancies in the little woman’s head as to how it might be used, and worked on them till he convinced her that they were serious. Then no sooner does he hear of the existence of the bottle than it fascinates him. An unknown drug, one whose effects will defy analysis—what a prize for a man who is fast sinking into a hardened criminal! Remember that if Armstrong had not happened to bring a sample of his find to me you might now be under sentence for the murder.”
I shook as I recognized the truth of what hesaid. Even Tarleton’s skill might have failed to demonstrate the presence of a strange drug unknown to the whole medical world.
“This accursed bottle next has the same effect on Mrs. Weathered. She is a good woman and she has been a faithful wife and a forgiving one. I believe every word of her story. I fully believe that she took the bottle with no intention to do anything but destroy it and its contents. But no sooner is it in her keeping than she succumbs to its temptation. She is fascinated by the idea of the invisible death it can deal. All kinds of motives and excuses spring up in her mind like spectres conjured up by a magician. So she becomes a murderess in intention, a murderess by proxy, one may say.
“Even Madame Bonnell, I think it most likely, had no idea of killing Weathered before this bottle came into her hands. She had committed one murder already and she seems to have had a narrow escape that time. She was a prudent woman, too, a woman to weigh risks carefully before taking them. I think it quite probable that her only idea at first was to use this bottle to extort money from Mrs. Weathered. But very quickly she was in its power. Then it was that she began weaving the romance of Weathered’s revengeful patients, a picture only too well founded on fact. She may have hoped to find an enemy of Weathered’s to do the job for her; however, you saved her the trouble. She saw her chance, and that night she had a double security.From first to last it is evident that she trusted to the Crown Prince’s name to pull her through everything, and in a way it did.”
“What made you think she had committed a crime in France, sir?”
“I didn’t. It was a mere shot in the dark. I asked Charles to get her finger-print without her knowing, and I took it over to Paris on the bare chance that she might be known to the French police. It is fortunate that she was.”
We were in Eaton Square by this time, after coming along the King’s Road. My chief seemed to know where he was going, but he did not tell me till we had gone round the back of the Palace and come out in Piccadilly. When we crossed the road my heart began to beat quicker.
The dear old man had made up his mind to pull me through, and I suspect he did it as much for Violet’s sake as mine. He must have seen that there was some obstacle between us, but he never asked what it was. He only gave me one hint before we reached the house.
“No man ever won a woman yet by making the worst of himself, Cassilis. If you haven’t anything else to be proud of, be proud of being loved and show it.”
The Earl, whom we found at home, was more than half prepared to listen to us. He had changed for the better, too, since he had taken Sir Frank’s advice. He showed that he felt he owed a debt tohim and another to his daughter, and was not unwilling to discharge both. It was my advocate who did most of the talking. He surprised and delighted me by telling my prospective father-in-law that I needn’t throw up my post under him just yet. “Not till he is on his feet comfortably,” he put it.
In the end the Earl said, “Well, I will see what my daughter has to say, Dr. Cassilis.” And he rang the bell.
When Violet came in she saw why she had been sent for, before her father spoke. She had her answer ready when he put the question. “This young gentleman has come here to ask me for your hand, Violet. What am I to say to him?”
“He hasn’t asked me yet,” she whispered.
My dear chief sprang to his feet. “I think we had better leave these young people together, my lord.”
We are together still.
THE END