CHAPTER XXIV
A CONFERENCE--INTERRUPTED
"The case has narrowed down," said Gatton, "from my point of view,into the quest of one man--"
"Dr. Damar Greefe!"
"Precisely. You have asked me what I found at Friar's Park and theBell House, and I can answer you very briefly. Nothing! The latterplace, had quite obviously been fired in a systematic and deliberateway. I suspect that the contents of the rooms had been soaked withpetrol. It burned to a shell and then collapsed. At the present momentit is merely a mound of smoking ashes.
"Of course, the local fire-brigade was hopelessly ill-equipped, buteven with the most up-to-date appliances I doubt if the conflagrationcould have been extinguished. The men watching the house were thrownquite off their guard when flames began to leap out of the windows:hence, the escape of Damar Greefe."
"You are sure he _did_ escape?"
Gatton stared at me grimly.
"To whom do you suppose you are indebted for the telephone trick?" heasked. "Besides--Blythe, the fool, actually heard the car at themoment that it came out on to the highroad! Oh, they bungled thething villainously. My Marathon feat saved your life, Mr. Addison, butit looks like losing me the case! We have the Hawkins couple. But,although a graceless pair, they were more dupes than knaves. I amconvinced, personally, that neither of them suspected that LadyBurnham Coverly was dead. Damar Greefe had represented to them thatshe had lost her reason."
"Good heavens! what a scheme!"
"What a scheme, indeed. Hawkins seems to have considered that hisduty--which was merely to keep intruders out of the park--was dictatedby necessity. He thought that if Lady Coverly's real condition becameknown she would be removed to a madhouse! He also thought that a_nurse_ was in attendance."
"A nurse!"
"Yes. He assured me that he had heard and seen her! Mrs. Hawkins alsowas certain on the point. Neither of them were ever allowed in thehouse, by the way. But Damar Greefe paid them well--and they weresatisfied. The identity of the 'nurse' is evident, I think?"
"Perfectly evident. But how was poor Lady Coverly disposed of--and whythis elaborate secrecy?"
"Well," replied Gatton slowly--"out of the multitude of notes which Ihave compiled upon the case, I have worked out a sort of summary, andit amounts to this: The whole series of outrages turns upon somethingin the financial arrangements of the late Sir Burnham of benefit tothe Eurasian doctor. It may be that Damar Greefe had some secretlocked up in the Bell House which he could not very well remove, andthat the greatest peril he feared was the taking over of the Parkproperty by an heir. I assume he had complete authority over the lateLady Burnham; and his object in concealing her death (for ourinvestigations at Friar's Park have definitely established the factthat no one had resided there for twelve months at least) was clearlythis: he hoped to carry on the pretense of attending upon the invaliduntil--"
"Until there was no heir to the property remaining alive!" Iinterrupted excitedly. "Exactly, Gatton! That is my own theory, too!
"We have now received," continued the Inspector, "some particularsconcerning the circumstances of Roger Coverly's death in Basle. Whilstthere was no direct evidence of foul play (and at that time at anyrate no reason to suspect it) I am convinced that the local physicianwho attended him at the hotel and the specialist who was sent forpost-haste from Zurich were by no means agreed as to the cause ofdeath.
"The symptoms were apparently not unlike those which would be causedby a snake-bite, for instance; but naturally one does not look forpoisonous snakes in Switzerland. There was some sort of inflammationof the skin apparently"--he consulted a page of his note-book--"whichmight have been eczema or something similar, of course, but whichaccording to medical evidence had no apparent connection with thecause of his death. This was given in the certificate simply assyncope--although there did not appear to be any hereditary cardiactrouble or anything of the kind to account for a young fellow of thatage dying suddenly of heart failure. And there had been nothing in hislife during his sojourn at Basle which would help to clear up themystery.
"However, no doubt seems to have arisen at the time, as you can wellunderstand; nevertheless, I, personally, count the death of RogerCoverly as the first of the outrages to be laid to the credit of Dr.Damar Greefe!"
"The object of the whole thing is still completely dark to me," Ideclared.
"In a sense it is dark to _me_," replied Gatton; "but considering thatthe boy died at a time when the health of his father, Sir Burnham, wasalready giving cause for anxiety, I maintain that he was removedbecause his inheritance of Friar's Park was feared--by some one. Theinvitation from Dr. Damar Greefe to Sir Marcus is a very significantpiece of evidence, of course; and when we consider that it reached SirMarcus within a very short time of his return from Russia, theconclusion is obvious.
"He inherited the title on the death of Sir Burnham, whilst he was onservice in Archangel. Being in Russia, I conclude that he was notaccessible from the Eurasian doctor's point of view. Directly he_became_ accessible, this invitation arrived; and it is perfectlyclear that the fate intended for him was that which so nearly befellyourself! Remember, I have seen the gun mounted on the tower ofFriar's Park and I assure you it was not placed there yesterday. Inshort, I have no doubt that it was put there in anticipation of SirMarcus's visit and only employed in your case as a sort ofafterthought.
"The Red House plot was the next move on the part of the Eurasian, andit succeeded almost faultlessly. The accident at the docks preventedthe scheme being carried out in all its details, but it did notentirely dislocate the murderer's arrangements, for it left us with nobetter clew to his identity than the statuette of the cat."
"The presence of that statuette calls for some explanation, Gatton," Isaid.
Gatton very carefully lighted his pipe.
"That is true," he admitted, "but I will come to this side of the caselater; at present I am summing up the evidence against DamarGreefe--who is certainly the acting partner in this series of outragesagainst the members of the house of Coverly. Observe the ingenuity ofthe Red House plot.
"He hoped by this not only to bring about the death of Sir Marcus, butalso, by conviction for his murder, the death of the next heir, Mr.Eric Coverly! In fact, so well was his plan conducted, that evennow--although we know poor Sir Eric to have been innocent--you willnote that he has been unable to establish an alibi even by a fullconfession of his movements on the night of the crime! In other words,if he had not fallen a victim to the precipitancy of his enemies,to-day his name would be under as black a cloud as ever. It was withthe idea of clearing him that I caused those paragraphs to bedistributed to the press, in which I anticipated the existence ofsuch a confession as he had actually made--but, I may add, of one moreconvincing than that which we heard Miss Merlin read."
"Do you mean, Gatton," I said, looking hard at him, "that byprofessing to have established the innocence of Eric Coverly, youhoped to draw down upon him the renewed activities of his enemies?"
Gatton looked rather guilty, but:
"I do admit it!" he said. "Nevertheless he did not fall a victim tothis trap which I had laid for him in his own best interests. Afterall, you must admit that his death was an accident; for he sufferedthe penalty of your misdeeds."
"My misdeeds!" I cried.
Gatton smiled grimly.
"I say misdeeds," he continued--"although they were not conscious onyour part. But it is fairly evident, I think, that whereas the unknownpartner of Dr. Damar Greefe was an active enemy of the Coverlys(witness the evidence of 'the voice' and of the cat statuette), it isto Dr. Damar Greefe _himself_ that you are indebted for the threeattempts on your life; the first two at Upper Crossleys and the thirdhere in your own home by the simple but deadly expedient ofsubstituting for your own 'phone the duplicate one which previouslyhad been employed so successfully at the Red House! He hoped to removea dangerous obstacle from his path and a menace to this safety."
"But, my dear Gatton, why should h
e regard _me_ as a menace moredeadly than you, for instance?"
"The reason is very plain," answered Gatton. "I don't think he paidyou the compliment of regarding your investigations as likely to provemore successful than my own, but I do think that he apprehended dangerfrom the indiscretions of his lady accomplice."
"Do you refer to the woman who visited me at the Abbey Inn?"
"I do," said Gatton shortly, "and to the woman who visited you hereand stole the statuette of Bast! The history of Edward Hines and hispredecessor, which you have so admirably summarized, points to thepresence in the Upper Crossleys neighborhood of such a character as wehave been seeking ever since your experience here (I refer to thecat-eyes which looked in through the window)."
"I begin to see, Gatton," I said slowly.
"With what object this unknown woman visited you at the Abbey Inn Icannot conjecture, but doubtless this would have been revealed had nother visit been interrupted and terminated by the appearance of theEurasian doctor upon the scene. From your own account she recognizedthat she had committed an indiscretion by coming there, and of thedoctor's anger--- which he was quite unable to conceal--you have toldme. Note also that the next episode was your being followed by Cassim,the Nubian, undoubtedly with murderous intent. Then, recognizing thathe had hopelessly compromised himself, the Eurasian took desperatemeans to silence you for ever."
"He did," I said, "and came very near to succeeding. But to return,Gatton, to this problem of the image of Bast. You see, the figure ofa cat was painted upon the case in which Sir Marcus's body was foundand the image of a cat was discovered inside the case. Then, you willnot have overlooked the significance of the fact that Edward Hines wasthe recipient of a present from his unknown friend which also took theform of a gold figure of a cat, and which I found, when I examined it,to be of ancient Egyptian workmanship."
"Right!" said Gatton, and emphatically bringing his open hand downupon the table: "I said at the very beginning of the case, Mr.Addison, that it turned upon the history of this Egyptian goddess, andI think my theory has been substantiated at every point."
"It has, Inspector," I agreed; "but I don't know that the factenlightens us very much; for it merely indicates that the man whom youdeclare to be the central figure of the conspiracy is only a secondaryfigure, and that all we know about the person whom we may regard asthe prime mover is that she is a woman--apparently possessingsupernormal eyes which glitter in the dark. She is also associated insome way with the figure of Bast. What is her relation to Dr. DamarGreefe and in what way is she interested in the destruction of theCoverly family?"
Gatton smoked in silence for a while, staring at me reflectively,then:
"If we knew that, Mr. Addison," he said, "we should know all there isto know about 'the _Oritoga_ mystery.' But I think we should haveadvanced a long step towards this information if we could apprehendthe Eurasian. Of course we have gathered up all the ragged details ofthe Red House incident: I refer to the carter who delivered the crateand collected it in the morning, of the caterer who supplied thesupper and so forth. As I had fully expected, none of the evidencehelped us at all."
"'The voice,'" I began.
"Exactly! The same 'voice' beyond a doubt, and the whole thing workedthrough the means of district messengers and others, telephonicallyinstructed. No one appeared throughout, Mr. Addison."
"Yet," I said deliberately, "there was one point at which some one_must_ have appeared--"
"Yes," he interrupted, "some one dragged the body out of thatsupper-room, down to the garage, and packed it in the crate."
"You have definitely convinced yourself that the telephone device waspracticed there?"
"Beyond question. Haven't you seen the exchange number? That plugwhere at some time a gas-fitting had been fixed up in the wall--youremember?--proved on investigation to communicate with an empty roomadjoining. The gas cylinder was placed there of course, and thetelephone in the recess of the supper-room, where, fastened in by thevelvet curtain, any one using the poison installation would besuffocated almost immediately."
"Good God, Gatton!" I cried. "It's a horrible business, and for my ownpart I have no idea what the next step should be."
"I'm a bit doubtful, myself," admitted Gatton; "but you know the lineof reasoning which has led me to the conclusion that these peoplepossess a base of operations somewhere in this district. I am havingthe neighborhood scoured pretty thoroughly, and I think it is merely aquestion of time, now, for us to hem in the wanted man--"
"And the wanted woman!" I added.
We were interrupted by a knock at the study door, and Coates came inwith the evening mail.
"Excuse me, Gatton," I said--for I had observed that one of theletters was from Isobel.
Eagerly I tore open the envelope ... and what I read struck a suddenchill to my heart. Looking up:
"Gatton!" I cried--"Miss Merlin has received, by post, a smallstatuette of Bast!"
"What!"
"From her brief description I am almost tempted to believe that it isthe one which was stolen from here! She is dreadfully frightened,naturally."
The Inspector stood up.
"We must see it," he said rapidly, "at once; and we must see thewrapping it came in and the postmark. It is maddening," he burst outangrily, "to think that Dr. Damar Greefe may be somewhere within lessthan half a mile of us as we sit here now, that we could ring him upif we knew his number; but that even with all the resources of theCriminal Investigation Department at work we may yet be unable to findhim! Even an outside suburb like this is a very big place to searchand the job is something like looking for a needle in a haystack!"
My own frame of mind was one of horrible doubt and indecision. I knewnot what to do for the best; and Gatton had begun to pace up and downlike a caged wild beast. Therefore:
"Fill your pipe," I said wearily. "A lot may depend upon our nextmove. To make a false one would perhaps be fatal."
Gatton stared at me almost savagely, then threw himself back into thearmchair from which he had arisen, and was just reaching out for thetobacco-jar which I had pushed before him, when a bell rang. I heardCoates opening the front door, and wondering whom this late visitorcould be, I stared questioningly at the Inspector.
Came a tap upon the door.
"Come in," I cried.
Coates entered, and standing stiffly in the doorway:
"_Dr. Damar Greefe_!" he announced.
Unmoved, he stood aside; and whilst Gatton and I slowly rose from ourchairs in a state of utter stupefaction, the Eurasian doctor entered,and stood, a tall, gaunt figure, towering over the burly form ofCoates in the doorway!
His hawk eyes blazed feverishly and his face was drawn and haggard,whilst I observed with a sort of horrified wonder that he seemed to bealmost too weak to stand. For, as Gatton and I came finally to ourfeet, he clutched at the edge of a bookcase, but recovered himself,bowed in that stately fashion which immediately translated me inspirit to the strange library in the Bell House, and:
"Gentlemen," he said, and his harsh voice rose scarcely above awhisper--"pray resume your seats. I shall not detain you long."