XXIII

The noise of the roaring presses came up to Tab as he worked in his office. The building shook and trembled, for every machine was running with the story of the mystery of Mayfield. Slip by slip his copy was rushed to the linotype room. Presently the presses would stop and the last city edition would be prepared.

He finished at last, pulled the last sheet from the typewriter and hunched himself back in the chair.

To the detective’s warning he gave no serious attention. He was perfectly satisfied in his own mind that the burglar had come to his flat in order to secure the key. The menace was not against himself, but against Rex Lander. What was that menace, he wondered? Had the old man some other relative who felt himself wronged when the property passed into the hands of the Babe? He was confident that the search of his own belongings had been made in order to find something that had to do with Rex. As to the tearing up of his photographs⁠—he grinned at the thought.

“I never did like those pictures anyway,” he said.

“What pictures?” asked a solitary reporter in the room.

“I am vocalising my thoughts and unveiling the tablet of my mind,” said Tab politely.

The late duty man grinned.

“You are a lucky devil,” he said, “to be in both these cases. I have been five years on this paper and never had anything more exciting than a blackmail case which was hushed up before it went to court. What’s that drawing?”

“I am trying to draw a plan of the vault and the passage,” said Tab.

“Was the body found in exactly the same place?” asked the interested reporter.

“Almost,” said Tab.

“And the key?”

Tab nodded.

“Is there a window to the vault?” asked the reporter hopefully.

Tab shook his head.

“If the murderer was a bug, he couldn’t have got into that vault without unlocking the door,” he said.

As he was speaking the chief came in. He very seldom visited the reporters’ room and it was unusual to find him at the office at all after eleven o’clock. But the news of the crime had been telephoned to him and he had driven in. He was a stout man with gray hair and a disconcerting habit of anticipating excuses. He was at once High Priest and Father Confessor of the Megaphone office.

“Come into my room, Holland,” he said, and Tab obeyed meekly.

“The Trasmere murder seems to have been repeated in every detail,” he said. “Have you found out where this man Brown has been?”

“I gather that he has been in an opium den of some kind,” said Tab. “Yeh Ling⁠—”

“The man who owns the Golden Roof?” asked the editor quickly.

“That’s the chap. He gave us a hint that that is where Brown had been staying. The man was a notorious drug fiend.”

“I understand that two men went into the house together. Nobody saw the second man?”

“Nobody except Stott,” said Tab, “and Stott was so scared that he cannot give us anything like a picture of either of them. Certainly nobody saw him come out; he was gone when we arrived.”

“And the key on the table⁠—what does that mean?”

Tab made a gesture of despair.

“Of course I know what it means,” said the editor thoughtfully. “It is the murderer’s defense, prepared with devilish ingenuity in advance. Don’t you realise,” he said, seeing that his junior was taken aback by this theory, “that before you can convict the man who killed Trasmere, and presumably also killed Brown, you would have to prove that it was possible for him to get into the vault and out again, lock the door and return the key to the table⁠—and that is just what you could not prove.”

That the murderer had this in his mind was a new possibility to Tab. He had regarded the appearance of the key as a piece of whimsical mystifying on the part of the murderer, an act of bravado, rather than a serious attempt to save his own neck in the event of his detection.

“Carver says⁠—” he began.

“I know Carver’s theory,” interrupted the chief. “He thinks that the murderer made a mistake in the first instance and intended leaving the pistol behind with the idea of conveying the impression that Trasmere committed suicide. He would have been more clever than that; he certainly would not have shot him in the back. No, there is the fact. I was discussing it with a lawyer only last night, and he agreed with me. The murderer who killed these two unfortunate fellows is determined that there shall be no conclusive evidence against him and there will be none until you can prove how that key came to get on the table after the door had been locked from the outside.

“Now, Holland,” his manner was very serious, “there is certain to be terrible trouble over this crime and somebody is going to be badly hurt unless the murderer is brought to justice. That somebody will be your friend Carver, who, presumably, is in charge of this case and was in charge of the other. I like Carver,” he went on, “but I must join with the hounds that will put him down, unless he can give us something more than theories. And you are in it, too,” he tapped Tab’s chest with a plump forefinger, “head, heels and eyebrows! You are in it from my point of view, especially because it is your job to show the police just where they are wrong, and you have had exceptional opportunity. I am not going to say what will happen to you if you don’t get the biggest story of your life out of this murder, because I don’t believe in threatening a man who may fall down here, and come up smiling on another case, and anyway you are too good a man to threaten. But we’ve got to get this crime cleared up, Holland.”

“I realise that, sir,” said Tab.

“And it will be cleared,” said the editor, “when you have discovered how that key got on the table. Don’t forget that, Holland. Mark that! Puzzle your young brain and get me a solution of that mystery and all the other mysteries will be cleared up.”

Tab knew that Carver was still at Mayfield; he had gone back there after inspecting the rack and ruin left by the burglar in Doughty Street, and Tab went straight on from the office to find, as he expected, that Inspector Carver had by no means completed his investigation.

“The pins are different,” were his first words.

The bright little articles were lying on the table before him, and Tab saw at a glance that one was shorter than the other.

“I wonder if our friend missed it,” said Carver. “He must have done so on this occasion though he probably overlooked the loss on the first murder. Anyway, what is a pin, more or less,” he added moodily. “Come down to the vault, Tab.”

The door of the strongroom was open and the light was burning when Tab went in. He looked at the second stain on the floor, and, despite his excellent nerves, shuddered.

“No weapon was found⁠—he did not even attempt to fake a suicide.”

Tab told him then his chief’s opinion on that matter, and Carver listened with respect and growing interest.

“That never occurred to me,” he said, “though it is nevertheless a fact that it would be next to impossible to bring the crime home to the man even if we found him in the passage, with a smoking revolver in his hand.”

“In that case,” said Tab, “we shall never find him at all.”

Carver was silent.

“I wouldn’t go so far as taking that view,” he said at last, “but it is certainly going to be difficult. There are no fingerprints,” he said when Tab looked enquiringly at one of the polished black boxes on the shelf. “Our mysterious Man in Black wore gloves. By-the-way, I am going to keep an officer on duty in the house for a day or two, to discover whether the murderer returns. I have no hope that he will.”

He turned the light out, locked the door of the vault, and they went back to the sitting-room.

“This lets out Felling. I think I have made that remark before,” said the detective. “Obviously he was innocent, because at the moment this crime was committed, he was under arrest. Incidentally,” he made a little face, “it lets out Brown! In fact, Tab, the only two people who seem to be left in are you and I.”

“That occurred to me too,” said Tab with a quick smile.

That morning he got up to find a bulky letter in his box. It was unstamped and had been delivered by hand, and recognising the superscriptions, he opened it with an exclamation of surprise. It was dated Hotel Villa, Palermo, and was from Rex.

“Dear Tab (it read): I am tired of travel and I am coming home. Loud cheers from Doughty Street! The mails here are very erratic and I have just heard horrific stories of the pilfering that goes on in the Italian post offices, so I am asking one of the stewards of the Paraka, the ship on which I came to Naples, and which is leaving here today, to deliver this for me, the enclosed being of some value. I picked it up in a little shop in Rome and knowing how interested you are in crime and criminals, I am sure you will appreciate it. It is a scarab ring, authentically the property of Caesar Borgia. In fact I have with it a guarantee as long as your arm.⁠ ⁠…”

Tab read no further, but took up the ring that had come out of the envelope and examined it curiously. It was even too small for his little finger, but it was a beautiful piece of work, the beetle being cut from a solid turquoise.

“Don’t bother tipping the steward,” (the letter went on), “I am tipping like Croesus, and I have given him enough money to set himself up for life. I haven’t the slightest idea what I shall do when I come back, but I am certainly not going to that charnel-house of Uncle Jesse’s, and as you will not have me, I shall probably live luxuriously at the best hotel in town. Forgive me for not writing before, but pleasure is a great business.

There was a P.S.:

“If the fast boat calls here on Wednesday, and there is some uncertainty as to whether it will or not, I think I shall come straight away home. If you don’t hear from me, you will know I have changed my mind. There are some stunning girls at Palermo.”

There was a further P.S.:

“We will have a dinner the night I return. Invite that sixty-nine-inch brain of yours, Carver.”

Tab grinned, put the ring and the letter away in his desk and gave himself over to the serious consideration as to whether it would be advisable for Rex to come back to Doughty Street. He missed him terribly at times. Apparently he had got over his infatuation for Ursula, for the references to the stunning girls at Palermo did not seem to harmonize with a broken heart.

He had arranged to go to tea with Ursula that afternoon, but he had his doubts as to whether he would be able to keep his promise. The second case was absorbing every minute of his time, and he was already regretting the bond of secrecy under which he worked.

On this subject he spoke frankly to Carver when he saw him. Carver saw his point of view.

“There is no reason why you shouldn’t tell everything⁠—the full story if you like, Tab, all except⁠—all except the new pins,” he added.

Tab was delighted. So far he had only been able to give the vaguest outlines of the story in print and the lifting of the embargo simplified his work enormously; incidentally it gave him time to see Ursula.

And she was glad to see him. She threw out two impulsive hands and gripped his as he came into her sitting-room at the Central.

“You poor hard-worked man! You look as if you haven’t slept for a week,” she said.

“I feel that way,” said Tab ruefully, “but if I yawn whilst I am with you, throw a cup at me⁠—not necessarily an expensive cup⁠—I respond to the commonest of crockery.”

“Of course, you are working on this new crime?” she asked, busy with the teapot. “It is dreadful. Brown is the poor fellow they were trying to discover, weren’t they? Isn’t he the man that Yeh Ling spoke about?”

Tab nodded.

“Poor soul,” she said softly, “he was from China also? I remember. And you have captured Walters. I never thought that Walters was guilty. I did not like the man; I had seen him once and felt instinctively repulsed from him, though I never thought that he would murder Mr. Trasmere.”

She turned quickly to another topic with relief.

“I have had an offer to go back to the stage, but of course, I am not going,” she said. “I wonder if you will believe me when I tell you that I hate the stage? It is full of the most unhappy memories for me.”

Suddenly a thought struck Tab.

“I heard from Rex this morning,” he said. “He is coming back again. You haven’t heard from him?”

She shook her head and her eyes were grave.

“Not since he wrote me that letter,” she said. “I am dreadfully sorry.”

“I shouldn’t be,” he smiled. “I think Rex has made a very good recovery. Besides it is the prerogative of youth to fall in love with beautiful actresses.”

“Spoken like a greybeard,” she said with laughter in her eyes. “You are never so amusing as when you are patriarchal, Mr. Tab. Did you escape that heartbreaking experience?”

“Falling in love with actresses?” said Tab. “Yes, up to a point.”

“What was the point?” she asked.

“Well, ‘point’ doesn’t quite express my meaning,” said Tab carefully. “I should have said up to a date.”

Her eyes caught his and dropped.

“I don’t think that I should make any exceptions if I were you,” she said in a low voice. “Loving people can be a great nuisance.”

“You have found it so?” said Tab icily polite.

“I have found it so,” she repeated and went on quickly: “What is Rex going to do with life? He is very wealthy. Curiously enough I never dreamt that Mr. Trasmere would leave him everything. He used to grumble about Mr. Lander’s laziness to me, but I suppose he had not made any preparation for his terribly sudden end, and Mr. Lander inherited by right of relationship. He was Mr. Trasmere’s next of kin, was he not?”

“I believe he was,” said Tab, “but the dear old man made a will, written in his own hand, leaving Rex everything.”

He heard a crash and stared stupidly at the cup that had fallen to the floor and broken, and then looked up in amazement at Ursula. She was standing stiffly erect, her face as pale as death, staring at him.

“Say that again,” she said hollowly.

“What?” he asked puzzled. “About Rex inheriting the property? You knew that.”

She stood with compressed lips and then:

“Oh my God!” she whispered. “Oh my God, how dreadful!”

In a second he was by her side, his arm about her.

“What is it Ursula?” he asked anxiously, “are you ill?”

She shook her head.

“No, I have had a shock. I have just remembered some thing. Won’t you please forgive me?”

She turned from him quickly and ran out of the room, leaving Tab a prey to various emotions. He waited for fully a quarter of an hour before she reappeared. She was still pale, but she was calm and her first words were an apology.

“The truth is,” she said with a faint smile, “I am a nervous wreck.”

“What was it I said that upset you?”

“I don’t know. You talked about the will and it brought it all back,” she said hurriedly.

“Ursula, you are not speaking the truth. Accidentally I must have said something that horrified you. What was it?”

She shook her head.

“I am telling you the truth, Tab,” she said, and in her distress, dropped the prefix.

It was his flush that reminded her.

“I suppose I ought not to call you Tab,” she said a trifle incoherently, “but we actresses are bold and brazen women. I thought with your vast experience you would have known that. Really, I should have begun calling you Tab the first time I met you. And now you want to go⁠—you are trying to tell me that you don’t want to go until I explain what it was that distressed me, and you are going to refuse all explanation about my poor nerves, so I can see we are likely to have an interminably quarrelsome evening. Come and see me tomorrow⁠—Tab.”

He took her hand and kissed it, and felt awkward and artificial.

“That was very sweet of you,” she said gently.

When Tab left her he was feeling amazingly happy.