Ambrotox and Limping Dick Part 9

Trembling with excitement and keeping back genuine tears for Amaryllis, a guest to serve whom had been pleasure, the parlour-maid fetched him cold meat, bread and beer. When he had changed his clothes, he ate hastily in the hall, swallowing doggedly what he could not taste.

"Twenty-five minutes--they'll be in town. Another fifteen and the wires'll be humming," he calculated. "Twenty more--the local police will be here, and rub out every trace. Is there a trace, a mark--a print--a smell, even? I've got an hour."

He sent all the servants to bed, except Randal's chauffeur, whom he summoned to the hall.

"My car's fit to travel, Martin," he said. "Shove in as many tins of petrol as she'll hold. I may want her to-night. Run her out into the drive, put on an overcoat and sit inside till I come."

Then he went to the study, lit all the candles and another lamp, opened the safe with the duplicate key, and found, as he had expected, the money in its drawer.

"Mostly one-pound notes," he muttered, as he locked the safe.

Turning to leave it, he stood suddenly stock-still, head up and sniffing the air, puzzled by an intangible a.s.sociation of sense and memory.

Failing to fix it, he left the alcove, and went to the writing-table, choosing the chair she had sat in, when she could not, or would not, give reason for her tears. And now he gave a flash of thought where before he had refrained even from speculation. Could it have been the forgotten letter that had made her weep? Yet there had been no trouble in her face while she read it, and it seemed certain that the handwriting was unfamiliar.

While he mused his eyes were fixed on the alcove at the end of the room.

The light of the candle he had left there outlined sharply the edges of the two curtains which hung from the rod crossing the recess. At the ceiling their edges met, but, at a height of some two and a half feet from the floor, their folds were looped back to the wall in a style formally old-fas.h.i.+oned. And now, even before his mind became concerned, his eye was irritated by a lack of symmetry in the draping; for the drooping fold of the right-hand curtain was out of shape. Again, his thought ran, if thieves playing for so great a stake as Ambrotox had found a woman in their way, their best card was prompt murder. If they could abduct in silence, they could have killed silently. And this made clear to him the soundness of what had been hitherto a merely instinctive conviction; since they had not left her body dead, they had taken it away alive--and with no intent to kill elsewhere. For, if murder were to be done, the dead was safest of all behind them in the place of the theft.

Then again--while the distorted loop of the curtain haunted his subconscious mind, so that with imaginary fingers he was adjusting its curves, even while his mind pulled and twisted the elements of his problem--then, again, he thought, this thief--had he shrunk from murder, or merely from _this_ murder?

"If I could know that!"

And before he was well aware of what he did, he was in the opening of the alcove, handling that awkward fold--and again he drew breath, deep and slow through the nose; again the vague memory--again the elusive a.s.sociation. Was the scent--sweet as well as musty--was it in the curtain? But as he stooped, he saw what made him forget that vague odour: a crumpled bunch of the soft linen had been squeezed together, and was not yet recovered from the strain of some violent compression.

Gently stretching the stuff, and bringing it closer to the light, he found the almost regular marks, above and below, as of some serrated, semi-trenchant tool which had been closed upon the doubled piece of cloth.

"Teeth, by G.o.d!" said d.i.c.k. "Tried to gag her with it--shoved a bag of it in with his fingers, gets 'em out, and stoppers the lot with his hand. Before she faints, she bites--here and there she's gone clean through the stuff."

Indecision gone, he took the smaller lamp in his hand, and made a tour of the room.

At an angle to the fireplace was a broad-seated, high-backed oaken settee, covered with cus.h.i.+ons. The back almost hid the hearth from the french-window. The silk pillow nearest the alcove still kept the impress of a head.

"When they came in," he reasoned, "the back of that thing hid her. She'd lain down to rest, and stop that sobbing before she came back to me.

Fell asleep--women'll do that, happy or wretched, before they know where they are. They reached the safe, and that arm at the end would hide even her hair. While they're messing round with the safe, she wakes and peeps at 'em--was it cold feet or sand kept her from yelling? What next?"

He was back at the alcove now, on hands and knees, the lamp set on the ground, searching the thick pile of the carpet for signs of the struggle there must have been. And again the smell--near the right hand curtain where the wool of the carpet was rubbed.

Roses--attar of roses! Where had he heard of attar of roses combined with--with what? And again the two wires would not touch--but they were throwing a spark across the gap.

Yes, it was Caldegard--Caldegard had said something--something of a foul man and a rotten stink. It was some story he'd been telling that first night at dinner.

Then a glitter in the carpet. Half-hidden--trodden in amongst the roughened wool, he found it--a morsel of bright steel--the needle of a hypodermic syringe. Who had spoken lately of a morphinomaniac that carried his syringe always with him?

Why, Caldegard, Caldegard!

"Melhuish?--Melford?--Meldrum?--Melcher?-_Melchard!_ By G.o.d, the swine that stank!"

And he remembered how he had upset the silver candlestick, setting fire to the shades, to cover the girl's discomfort, and the smile she had paid him with. Then it was this particular murder from which the thief had shrunk.

Melchard, the chemist, had guessed at the direction of Caldegard's research. Discharged at a moment when his hope of mastering a valuable secret was at its height, he had found means to track Caldegard's movements, and even, it seemed, to discover the hiding-place of the perfected drug and its formula.

"Agent--or, p'r'aps, a leading member of the Dope Gang Caldegard hinted at. He lays his plans to grab the stuff and the formula. Just as he gets his fingers on it, up pops the only being on earth he'd give a d.a.m.n about knifing. Twenty years' clink if he leaves her to talk. Takes her with him--h.e.l.l's blight on him! Wouldn't have been dosing himself on a game like this. Used the syringe on her."

To find Melchard was to find Amaryllis. The first thing to do, therefore, was to find Melchard's address, and the first man to ask was Caldegard. If Caldegard could not give it to him, it meant a long hunt with the police. Anyway, he must begin with Caldegard.

He crossed to the telephone, lifted the receiver, and, hearing no tinkle, blew into the transmitter with the receiver at his ear. Hearing nothing, he hung it up with a curse.

Sitting at Randal's desk, he wrote rapidly the following note:

"Got the money. Enclose key. Melchard's the man we want. Get his address. 'Phone cut outside. Wire me address P.D.Q.--d.i.c.k."

Through the window he went to his car in the drive.

"Martin," he said, "get out Sir Randal's car and take this note to him.

Go to New Scotland Yard. They'll tell you where he is. Drive like h.e.l.l."

He went back into the house, ran upstairs, lit a candle in his room, stuffed one pocket with handkerchiefs, and into another dropped a tin of tobacco and an electric torch.

Why hadn't he brought a gun? Oh, well, it only meant five minutes at his flat in Great Windmill Street.

As he came down the pa.s.sage, his eyes, obeying a new habit which seemed already old, lingered a moment on Amaryllis' door. But it was not sentiment which checked his feet.

"There might be something," he muttered, and, without hesitation, entered the room.

An oppression of silence weighed upon him painfully as he felt for his match-box. When the candle showed it, the pretty room was a cruel jest.

His examination was made with business-like care. On the dressing-table was nothing but the pretty things which served her toilet; but on the writing-table in the window lay a pile of letters. The topmost he recognised at once for that which she had read in his presence after dinner.

As he pulled the stiff sheet from the envelope, he was aware once more of the odour which he had smelt first in the alcove of the study.

He spread the letter open. It was signed "Alban Melchard."

It was written on good paper, stamped with the address, and read as follows:

"Rue de la Harpe, 31, "Paris, "_June_ 18_th_.

"MY DEAR MISS CALDEGARD,

"I fear that you will be surprised at my venturing to write to you, considering the distressing circ.u.mstances under which we parted.

Although the small request I have to make of you is of some importance to me, I should not have the presumption to make it, if it were not that it gives me the opportunity to a.s.sure you that the pa.s.sage of time has made a wiser man of me--and a grateful one, for the delicate forbearance with which you taught me my place.

"I have recently met with good fortune in my profession, and am settling down as a man of business in the neighbourhood of Millsborough, with considerable prospect of success.

"In the happy days when it was my privilege to pick up unconsidered sc.r.a.ps of your father's scientific wisdom, I kept, jotted down in a notebook, many items for future use. Until recently I have had no occasion to refer to these notes, which I now find are essential to the success of my most promising scheme. I must have left the memoranda behind me with some other things, when I departed so suddenly last September.

"If you can have this notebook found for me, I will ask that it may be posted to me at The Myrtles, Grove End, near Millsborough, as I shall only be in Paris for three days longer.

"I heard, quite by chance from a friend, that Professor Caldegard was staying with Sir Randal Bellamy in Hertfords.h.i.+re, so I have ventured to use his address.

"Thanking you gratefully in antic.i.p.ation,