The Illustrious Prince Part 8

The Inspector was disappointed. He began to feel that he was wasting his time.

"Did you know anything of the object of his journey to Europe?" he asked.

"Nary a thing," Mr. Coulson declared. "He only came on deck once or twice, and he had scarcely a civil word even for me. Why, I tell you, sir," Mr. Coulson continued, "if he saw me coming along on the promenade, he'd turn round and go the other way, for fear I'd ask him to come and have a drink. A c-r-a-n-k, sir! You write it down at that, and you won't be far out."

"He certainly seems to have been a queer lot," the Inspector declared.

"By the bye," he continued, "you said something, I believe, about his having had more money with him than was found upon his person."

"That's so," Mr. Coulson admitted. "I know he deposited a pocketbook with the purser, and I happened to be standing by when he received it back. I noticed that he had three or four thousand-dollar bills, and there didn't seem to be anything of the sort upon him when he was found."

The Inspector made a note of this.

"You believe yourself, then, Mr. Coulson," he said, closing his pocketbook, "that the murder was committed for the purpose of robbery?"

"Seems to me it's common sense," Mr. Coulson replied. "A man who goes and takes a special train to London from the docks of a city like Liverpool--a city filled with the sc.u.m of the world, mind you--kind of gives himself away as a man worth robbing, doesn't he?"

The Inspector nodded.

"That's sensible talk, Mr. Coulson," he acknowledged. "You never heard, I suppose, of his having had a quarrel with any one?"

"Never in my life," Mr. Coulson declared. "He wasn't the sort to make enemies, any more than he was the sort to make friends."

The Inspector took up his hat. His manner now was no longer inquisitorial. With the closing of his notebook a new geniality had taken the place of his official stiffness.

"You are making a long stay here, Mr. Coulson?" he asked.

"A week or so, maybe," that gentleman answered. "I am in the machinery patent line--machinery for the manufacture of woollen goods mostly--and I have a few appointments in London. Afterwards I am going on to Paris.

You can hear of me at any time either here or at the Grand Hotel, Paris, but there's nothing further to be got out of me as regards Mr. Hamilton Fynes."

The Inspector was of the same opinion and took his departure. Mr.

Coulson waited for some little time, still sitting on his trunk and clasping his hairbrushes. Then he moved over to the table on which stood the telephone instrument and asked for a number. The reply came in a minute or two in the form of a question.

"It's Mr. James B. Coulson from New York, landed this afternoon from the Lusitania," Mr. Coulson said. "I am at the Savoy Hotel, speaking from my room--number 443."

There was a brief silence--then a reply.

"You had better be in the bar smoking-room at seven o'clock. If nothing happens, don't leave the hotel this evening."

Mr. Coulson replaced the receiver and rang off. A page-boy knocked at the door.

"Young lady downstairs wishes to see you, sir," he announced.

Mr. Coulson took up the card from the tray.

"Miss Penelope Morse," he said softly to himself. "Seems to me I'm rather popular this evening. Say I'll be down right away, my boy."

"Very good, sir," the page answered. "There's a gentleman with her, sir.

His card's underneath the lady's."

Mr. Coulson examined the tray once more. A gentleman's visiting card informed him that his other caller was Sir Charles Somerfield, Bart.

"Bart," Mr. Coulson remarked thoughtfully. "I'm not quite catching on to that, but I suppose he goes in with the young lady."

"They're both together, sir," the boy announced.

Mr. Coulson completed his toilet and hurried downstairs

CHAPTER VII. A FATAL DESPATCH

Mr. Coulson found his two visitors in the lounge of the hotel. He had removed all traces of his journey, and was attired in a Tuxedo dinner coat, a soft-fronted s.h.i.+rt, and a neatly arranged black tie. He wore broad-toed patent boots and double lines of braid down the outsides of his trousers. The page boy, who was on the lookout for him, conducted him to the corner where Miss Penelope Morse and her companion were sitting talking together. The latter rose at his approach, and Mr.

Coulson summed him up quickly,--a well-bred, pleasant-mannered, exceedingly athletic young Englishman, who was probably not such a fool as he looked,--that is, from Mr. Coulson's standpoint, who was not used to the single eyegla.s.s and somewhat drawling enunciation.

"Mr. Coulson, isn't it?" the young man asked, accepting the other's outstretched hand. "We are awfully sorry to disturb you, so soon after your arrival, too, but the fact is that this young lady, Miss Penelope Morse,"--Mr. Coulson bowed,--"was exceedingly anxious to make your acquaintance. You Americans are such birds of pa.s.sage that she was afraid you might have moved on if she didn't look you up at once."

Penelope herself intervened.

"I'm afraid you're going to think me a terrible nuisance, Mr. Coulson!"

she exclaimed. Mr. Coulson, although he did not call himself a lady's man, was nevertheless human enough to appreciate the fact that the young lady's face was piquant and her smile delightful. She was dressed with quiet but elegant simplicity. The perfume of the violets at her waistband seemed to remind him of his return to civilization.

"Well, I'll take my risks of that, Miss Morse," he declared. "If you'll only let me know what I can do for you--"

"It's about poor Mr. Hamilton Fynes," she explained. "I took up the evening paper only half an hour ago, and read your interview with the reporter. I simply couldn't help stopping to ask whether you could give me any further particulars about that horrible affair. I didn't dare to come here all alone, so I asked Sir Charles to come along with me."

Mr. Coulson, being invited to do so, seated himself on the lounge by the young lady's side. He leaned a little forward with a hand on either knee.

"I don't exactly know what I can tell you," he remarked. "I take it, then, that you were well acquainted with Mr. Fynes?"

"I used to know him quite well," Penelope answered, "and naturally I am very much upset. When I read in the paper an account of your interview with the reporter, I could see at once that you were not telling him everything. Why should you, indeed? A man does not want every detail of his life set out in the newspapers just because he has become connected with a terrible tragedy."

"You're a very sensible young lady, Miss Morse, if you will allow me to say so," Mr. Coulson declared. "You were expecting to see something of Mr. Fynes over here, then?"

"I had an appointment to lunch with him today," she answered. "He sent me a marconigram before he arrived at Queenstown."

"Is that so?" Mr. Coulson exclaimed. "Well, well!"

"I actually went to the restaurant," Penelope continued, "without knowing anything of this. I can't understand it at all, even now. Mr.

Fynes always seemed to me such a harmless sort of person, so unlikely to have enemies, or anything of that sort. Don't you think so, Mr.

Coulson?"

"Well," that gentleman answered, "to tell you the honest truth, Miss Morse, I'm afraid I am going to disappoint you a little. I wasn't over well acquainted with Mr. Fynes, although a good many people seemed to fancy that we were kind of bosom friends. That newspaper man, for instance, met me at the station and stuck to me like a leech; drove down here with me, and was willing to stand all the liquor I could drink.

Then there was a gentleman from Scotland Yard, who was in such a hurry that he came to see me in my bedroom. _He_ had a sort of an idea that I had been brought up from infancy with Hamilton Fynes and could answer a sheaf of questions a yard long. As soon as I got rid of him, up comes that page boy and brings your card."

"It does seem too bad, Mr. Coulson," Penelope declared, raising her wonderful eyes to his and smiling sympathetically. "You have really brought it upon yourself, though, to some extent, haven't you, by answering so many questions for this Comet man?"

"Those newspaper fellows," Mr. Coulson remarked, "are wonders. Before that youngster had finished with me, I began to feel that poor old Fynes and I had been like brothers all our lives. As a matter of fact, Miss Morse, I expect you knew him at least as well as I did."

She nodded her head thoughtfully.