The Cinema Murder Part 39

"I've thought of all that. I've a photograph and a pa.s.sport and some letters. It isn't that I'm really afraid, but I hate being alone, and you look so nice, Philip dear. I always loved you in blue serge, and I adore your eyegla.s.s. You really have been clever in the small things you have done to change your appearance. Perhaps you are right not to come, though," she went on, looking in the mirror. "These clothes are the best I could get at a minute's notice. Mr. Dane was really quite nice, but he hadn't the least idea how long it takes a woman to prepare for a journey.

Never mind, you wait until I get back here this afternoon! I am going round to all the shops, and I am going to bring the clothes I buy away with me. Then I am going to lock myself in my room and change everything.

I am going to have some of those funny little patent shoes, and silk stockings--and, oh, well, all sorts of things you wouldn't understand about. And do try and cheer up before I get back, please, Philip. Twelve months ago you would have thought all this Paradise. Oh, I can't stop a moment longer!" she wound up, throwing away the cigarette she had taken from the box and lit. "I'm off now. And, Philip, don't you dare to go out of these rooms until I come back!"

She turned towards the door--she was half-way there, in fact--when they were both aware of a ring at the bell. She stopped short and looked around enquiringly.

"Who's that?" she whispered.

Philip glanced at the clock. It was too early for Elizabeth.

"No idea," he answered. "Come in."

The door opened and closed. Philip sat as though turned to stone.

Beatrice remained in the middle of the room, her fingers clasping the back of a chair. Mr. Dane, hat in hand, had entered.

"Good morning, Miss Wenderley!" he said. "Good morning, Mr. Ware!"

Philip said nothing. He had a horrible feeling that this was some trap.

Beatrice at first could only stare at the unexpected visitor. His sudden appearance had disconcerted her.

"I thought you were in Chicago, Mr. Dane!" she exclaimed at last.

"My plans were altered at the last moment," he told her. "No, I won't sit down, thanks," he added, waving away the chair towards which Philip had pointed. "As a matter of fact, I haven't been out of New York. I decided to wait and hear your news, Miss Wenderley."

"Well, you're going to be disappointed, then," she said bluntly. "I haven't any."

Mr. Dane was politely incredulous. He was also a little stern.

"You mean," he protested, "that you cannot identify this gentleman--that you don't recognise him as Mr. Douglas Romilly?"

"I cannot identify him," she repeated. "He is not Mr. Douglas Romilly."

"I have brought you all this way, then, to confront you with a stranger?"

"Absolutely," she insisted. "It wasn't my fault. I didn't want to come."

Mr. Dane's expression suddenly changed. His hard knuckles were pressed upon the table, he leaned forward towards her. Even his tone was altered.

His blandness had all vanished, his grey eyes were as hard as steel.

"A stranger!" he exclaimed derisively. "Yet you come here to his rooms early in the evening, you stay here, you go to the theatre with him the same night, you go on to supper at Churchill's and stay there till three o'clock in the morning, you are here with him again at nine o'clock--at breakfast time. A stranger, Miss Wenderley? Think again! A story like this might do for Scotland Yard. It won't do for us out here."

She knew at once that she had fallen into a trap, but she was not wholly dismayed. The position was one which they had half antic.i.p.ated. She told herself that he was bluffing, that it was simply the outburst of a disappointed man. On the whole, she behaved extraordinarily well.

"You brought me out here," she said, "to confront me with this man--to identify him, if I could, as Mr. Douglas Romilly. Well, he isn't Mr.

Douglas Romilly, and that's all there is about it. As to my going out with him last evening, I can't see that that's any concern of any one. He was kind to me, cheered me up when he saw that I was disappointed; I told him my whole story and that I didn't know a soul in New York, and we became friends. That's all there is about it."

"That so?" the detective observed, with quiet sarcasm. "You seem to have a knack of making friends pretty easily, Miss Wenderley."

"It is not your business if I have," she snapped.

"Well, we'll pa.s.s that, then," he conceded. "I haven't quite finished with you yet, though. There are just one or two more points I am going to put before you--and this gentleman who is not Mr. Douglas Romilly," he added, with a little bow to Philip. "The first is this. There is one fact which we can all three take for granted, because I know it--I can prove it a hundred times over--and you both know it; and that is that the Mr.

Merton Ware of to-day travelled from Liverpool on the _Elletania_ as Mr.

Douglas Romilly, occupied a room at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel as Mr.

Douglas Romilly, and absconded from there, leaving his luggage and his ident.i.ty behind him, to blossom out in an attic of the Monmouth tenement house as Mr. Merton Ware, a young writer of plays. Now I don't think,"

Mr. Dane went on, leaning a little further over the table, "that the Mr.

Douglas Romilly who has disappeared was ever capable of writing a play. I don't think he was a man of talent at all. I don't think he could have written, for instance, 'The House of Shams.' Let us, however, leave the subject of Douglas Romilly for a moment. Let us go a little further back--to Detton Magna, let us say. Curiously enough, there was another young man who disappeared from that little Derbys.h.i.+re village about the same time, who has never been heard of since. His name, too, was Romilly.

I gathered, during the course of my recent enquiries, that he was a poor relation, a cousin of Mr. Douglas Romilly."

"He was drowned in the ca.n.a.l," Beatrice faltered. "His body has been found."

"A body has been found," Mr. Dane corrected, "but it was in an unrecognisable state. It has been presumed to be the body of Philip Romilly, the poor relation, a starving young art teacher in London with literary aspirations--but I hold that that presumption is a mistake.

I believe," the detective went on, his eyes fastened upon Philip, his voice a little raised, "that it was the body of Douglas Romilly, the shoe manufacturer, which was fished out from the ca.n.a.l, and that you, sir, are Mr. Philip Romilly, late art-school teacher of Kensington, who murdered Douglas Romilly on the banks of the ca.n.a.l, stole his money and pocketbook, a.s.sumed his ident.i.ty in Liverpool and on the _Elletania_, and became what you are now--Mr. Merton Ware."

Philip threw away the cigarette which he had been smoking, and, leaning over the box, carefully selected another. He tapped it against the table and lit it.

"Mr. Dane," he said coolly, "I shall always be grateful to you for your visit this morning, for you have given me what is the most difficult thing in the whole world to stumble up against--an excellent idea for a new play. Apart from that, you seem, for so intelligent a man, to have wasted a good deal of your time and to have come, what we should call in English, a cropper. I will take you into my confidence so far as to admit that I am not particularly anxious to disclose my private history, but if ever the necessity should arise I shall do so without hesitation. Until that time comes, you must forgive me if I choose to preserve a certain reticence as to my antecedents."

Mr. Dane, in the moment's breathless silence which followed, acknowledged to himself the perpetration of a rare mistake. He had selected Philip to bear the brunt of his attack, believing him to be possessed of the weaker nerve. Beatrice, who at the end of his last speech had sunk into a chair, white and terrified, an easy victim, had rallied now, inspired by Philip's composure.

"You deny, then, that you are Mr. Philip Romilly?" the detective asked.

"I never heard of the fellow in my life," Philip replied pleasantly, "but don't go, Mr. Dane. You can't imagine how interesting this is to me. You have sent me a most charming acquaintance," he added, bowing to Beatrice, "and you have provided me with what I can a.s.sure you is almost pathetically scarce in these days--a new and very dramatic idea. Take a seat, won't you, and chat with us a little longer? Tell us how you came to think of all this? I have always held that the workings of a criminologist's brain must be one of the most interesting studies in life."

Mr. Dane smiled enigmatically.

"Ah!" he protested, "you mustn't ask me to disclose all my secrets."

"You wouldn't care to tell us a little about your future intentions?"

Philip enquired.

Mr. Dane shook his head.

"It is very kind of you, Mr. Merton Ware," he confessed, "to let me down so gently. We all make mistakes, of course. As to my future intentions, well, I am not quite sure about them. You see, this isn't really my job at all. It isn't up to me to hunt out English criminals, so long as they behave themselves in this city. If an extradition order or anything of that sort came my way, it would, of course, be different."

"Why not lay this interesting theory of yours before the authorities at Scotland Yard?" Philip suggested. "I am sure they would listen with immense interest to any report from you."

"That's some idea, certainly," the detective admitted, taking up his hat from the table. "For the present I'll wish you both good morning--or shall I say an revoir?"

"We may look for the pleasure of another visit from you, then?" Philip enquired politely.

The detective faced them from the doorway.

"Sir," he said to Philip, "I admire your nerve, and I admire the nerve of your old sweetheart, Miss Wenderley. I am afraid I cannot promise you, however, that this will be my last visit."

The door closed behind him. They heard the shrill summons of the bell, the arrival of the lift, the clanging of the iron gate, and its subsequent descent. Then Beatrice turned her head. Philip was still smoking serenely, standing with his back to the mantelpiece, his hands in his pockets. She rose and threw her arms around him.

"Philip!" she cried. "Why, you are wonderful! You are marvellous! You make me ashamed. It was only for a moment that I lost my nerve, and you saved us. Oh, what idiots we were! Of course he meant to watch--that's why he told me he was going to Chicago. The beast!"

"He seems to have got hold of the idea all right, doesn't he?" Philip muttered.